Shadowlark (27 page)

“You see,” Adjutant said, moving over toward the banks of machines in front of the glass box that held Oren, “he’s a savage even when he’s human. There’s no room in our new world for monsters like him.”

“Let him go,” Basil said coldly. “I trust Lark.” But I could see the confusion in Basil’s face. First I’d asked him to trust a pixie—now he was being asked to trust this.

“You don’t understand,” said Adjutant. “Let me show you.” He reached out and pulled a lever. My head rang with magic as something shifted, sucking the power out of the cell. Then Oren was gone, and in his place was the shadow.

It snarled soundlessly and threw itself against the glass with ten times the force Oren himself had been able to muster.

I couldn’t look at Basil. I couldn’t look at Adjutant, either. I could only watch as the thing that had been Oren threw itself at the glass over and over and over, mindless, full of rage and savagery and hunger. All I could hear was the dull thud of Oren’s body hitting the glass, his muffled snarls. My eyes burned.

“You see,” said Adjutant. “You see what she is. These are the creatures she pities. She wants to see them take over. She wants to ruin everything we’ve done.”

“No,” said Basil. I lifted my head with an effort, my eyes streaming. “What we’ve been doing, you and I, is wrong.”

Adjutant let the lever slide back into place, and I felt the ambient magic sliding back into place with it. The Orenmonster dropped to the floor of his cell, sides heaving. “Lord, allow me to remove this girl from your presence. Please, she’s infected your—”

“She’s done
nothing!
” shouted Basil. This was the voice of Prometheus, the voice of Adjutant’s god. “It has nothing to do with her—or this creature. We’re the monsters, Adjutant. Look around—this isn’t the new world. This isn’t right.
This isn’t what we set out to do.
”

Adjutant gazed at Basil. Beyond him I could see Oren, himself again, but too dazed and injured by his shadow self’s attempts to escape to do more than lie there, gasping.

“You’ve lost your way, Lord,” Adjutant said softly, his hand falling on the robes laid over the chair. “Lost sight of the utopia we’re creating here.”

“You’re the one who’s lost his way,” Basil replied, fists clenched. I could see tears standing in his eyes and realized that this was costing him as much as it had cost me to stand up to him.
Adjutant has been with me since the beginning
, he’d said.

His oldest—his only—friend.

“I wish you could understand the pain and the sorrow that I feel.” Adjutant’s voice was soft, sad. “To lose you this way. You were my mentor, my friend, my savior. My beacon. My god.”

Basil stood silently, opening and closing his fists, unable to speak.

“But the people must have direction.” Adjutant’s wide, staring eyes fixed on the wall above us. He reached for the robes on the chair, picking them up slowly, caressing them like something precious and beautiful. “If their god falters, then a new one must rise and take his place.”

I stared, drawn in by the insanity in his gaze, the way his eyes were fixed on something none of the rest of us could see—some vision of the twisted paradise he sought.

“Prometheus is dead.” Adjutant slowly swung the robes up and settled them over his shoulders. “Long live Prometheus.”

And then he reached out for Tansy again, thrusting his hand out toward Basil. A beam of violent purple light shot forth, hitting my brother square in the chest and throwing him back against the far wall with the force of the blast.

“NO!” The word tore from my throat as I lunged for him, but it was too late. The beam stopped, but crackling energy pinned Basil against the wall, several feet off the ground. He struggled, but the magic containing him was so thick I couldn’t even sense him behind it.

Adjutant turned to me. I threw up a barrier a millisecond before he turned the same blast on me. The force of it drove me backward until I hit the handrail of the catwalk, and I braced myself against it, throwing everything I had into my shield.

Oren was pressed against the glass, staring, his eyes anguished. Basil was still pinned, unable to speak or move. Adjutant laughed, shoving his other arm deeper into Tansy’s aura of magic.

“No wonder he didn’t share this with me,” he said, his wild grin only a flash of white teeth behind the violet beam spilling off my shield. “It’s glorious. Dare I say it, divine. I’d hoard it for myself as well.”

I had no strength to answer, every fiber of my being thrown into the shields. I didn’t have enough to do anything but block his attack—no way to enact a countermeasure. And I wasn’t going to last much longer.

And then Nix zoomed out of nowhere, its mechanisms screaming bloody murder. It flew directly at Adjutant, stinger extended. Adjutant swept it aside with a flick of his head, and Nix went tumbling through the air, disoriented. Righting itself, Nix hovered for a moment, indecisive. Then, so fast I couldn’t track it through the tears of pain and effort streaming from my eyes, it flew over to the bank of machines in front of Oren’s cell. It started throwing itself at every button it could find, frantic.

Adjutant laughed again, turning his gaze back on me. “I see you found your way past our reprogramming. Shame, I was hoping we’d be able to use that device. I’ll see to it that it’s destroyed as soon as we’re done here.”

He didn’t seem to be tiring at all—in fact, he seemed stronger and more insane with every passing second, his very skin alive with magic, crackling. But behind him a series of red lights began to flash.

The machines are designed to cut off before the Renewable runs out of power and dies,
Basil had said. I glanced at Tansy, squinting. I couldn’t see her well through the layers of magic between us, my second sight interfering with my regular vision. She was rising in the column, arms and legs splayed, eyes turned toward the ceiling. Up to the second tier of machines, and on, and on . . .

A dull pounding grabbed my attention and dragged it back to Nix. Oren was banging on the glass—Nix heard and looked up. Oren gestured frantically, miming, pointing toward some particular dial or button that I couldn’t see. Nix launched itself straight down, slamming into the button—and the door of Oren’s cage slid open.

Adjutant turned, leveling his arm this time at Oren. Without the force of the beam on my shields I stumbled forward and fell, crying out a ragged warning. But Oren was fast—as fast as Olivia. Faster. He dodged easily, sprinting around to the other side of the circle. Nix went the other way. There were too many targets—Adjutant roared frustration. I started to gather my own power, ready to end this once and for all.

And then he looked at me, teeth bared, his eyes burning violet and gold, magic leaking from his ears and nose and dribbling out of his mouth like flames. “I will not let you destroy paradise,” he said in a voice that was no longer his own, hissing and crackling with power.

In one surge he jerked the remaining magic from the harvester—and it exploded, throwing us all outward. My head struck the wall and I slumped to the ground, dazed. I dragged myself up by the handrail, dizzy and nauseous. I looked up in time to see Tansy thrown from the column as it vanished, her body striking the wall and landing on the catwalk three stories up.

Adjutant was stirring feebly, smoke and steam rising from his body as he pulled himself up. I ignored him, sprinting for the nearest staircase. Nix, flight path wobbly and slow as it repaired itself at the same time, cut past me, headed straight for Tansy.

My muscles and lungs burned as though my struggle against Adjutant’s magic had been a physical one, but I ignored them. I just had to get to her—give her enough power to keep her heart beating. Repay the gift she’d given me—give her magic back.

I reached the top of the second flight of stairs and ricocheted off the wall as I lurched forward. I threw myself down beside her, ignoring the pain as the metal catwalk stripped several layers of skin from my knees. I pressed both hands to her body, willing my magic to go forth.

Tansy was still moving—her eyes turned toward me as I touched her. But I could see she was empty, that there was nothing left inside her. She was as black and hollow as the man I’d killed in the square. She was bleeding from a number of abrasions from striking the wall, but the blood was seeping gently, slowly. Her heart wasn’t beating.

“No, nonono—Tansy, stay with me. Look at me. It’s Lark, I’m here, you’re going to be fine.” I shoved harder, trying to force my magic into the black chasm of her heart.

Her staring gaze fixed on mine. For just a moment, it seemed as though she recognized me—her eyes widened. Her lips moved—they twitched into the tiniest smile as she gazed at my face.

Then she died.

For a moment I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. There was just Tansy’s face, her eyes gazing up at me, gazing through me, blood still seeping sluggishly from the gashes on her arms, on her cheek. There was no longer a black emptiness inside her—there wasn’t anything. There was no hole where her life used to be because everything that made her Tansy was gone. The thing I was touching, cradling, was a husk and nothing more.

Breath returned to me with a jerk, as violently as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me. It sobbed in and out of me as I got shakily to my feet, staggering to the handrail and looking down.

Adjutant stood there, looking up at me. Burns covered his body in patches, his once-handsome face distorted in a snarl. Sections of his hair were gone, the rest of it sticking out in patches. The robes of Prometheus were charred and sootstained, unrecognizable. But he still wore Basil’s device—and despite the explosion, it was intact.

His eyes on me, he reached out and threw his hand against the banks of machines. Tiny explosions and sparks jumped up everywhere, landing on his skin, on his clothes, but he didn’t even flinch. Painfully he dragged the magic out of the machines and into himself, gathering for another strike.

Tansy’s death wasn’t enough for him.

When it came, I didn’t have time to throw up my shields. The blast hit me off-center, in the arm, throwing one shoulder back. Something cracked, sending pain shooting up my arm as it fell to dangle uselessly at my side.

I don’t need hands to kill you.
I gritted my teeth, sucking air through my nose, trying to focus on Wesley’s meditation exercises.
Pain is nothing. Pain’s just in my mind.
But as I started to get some focus together another blast came, this one knocking me back against the wall, hitting me squarely in the stomach and dropping me to my knees.

Where were Oren, Nix, Basil? I couldn’t see—through the grating, on my hands and knees, I could only see bodies everywhere. The smell of burning flesh and hair and chemicals singed my nostrils, and something dripped down my back—sweat or blood, I couldn’t tell.

I was alone. And I had only one more trick to try.

I pulled myself up with my one good arm, choking back a groan of pain as a wave of nausea rolled over me. I tried to reach into my pocket but found that my fingers were burned, too swollen to fit inside it. I couldn’t get at the device. Another bolt came at me, hitting the railing of the catwalk instead and blasting it into in a million white-hot shards that stung me all over my face and throat.

I stood up, and my eyes found Oren. He was lying facedown, but as I watched he picked himself up on his arms, his gaze sweeping the catwalk and then resting on me. For a moment I just looked at him, thinking of all the things I should have said before we left.

No regrets,
Olivia had said to me. I gazed at Oren, willing him to understand. I took a deep breath.

Somehow Oren sensed what I was about to do a fraction of a second before I moved.

“Lark—NO!”

But I was already running, aiming for the gap in the railing—I jumped—and then I was falling.

One good impact will set it off.

My instincts tried to kick in, tried to form the same sort of magical cushion that had saved me twice before. I fought them tooth and nail, trying desperately to override my body’s natural desire to save itself.

And then I hit.

The world exploded. Adjutant screamed, and for a moment there was only a column of fire burning purple and gold, and his screams turned hoarse and raspy and then melted away into silence—and then everything was gone.

“Don’t move her—don’t touch her!”

“Oh god, is she—please—”

“I don’t know. Move back, I said!”

“It’s coming this way—I don’t think Curio can hold it.” Snarling, screaming, flashes of light and dark. “You’ve got to get her up—I can’t do it, I have to be touching things and if I get close enough it’ll tear me apart.”

“Lark.” A voice breathed into my ear. “Lark you have to wake up.”

No. Leave me alone. I’m dead, let me stay that way.

“Oren’s going to kill us all, or we’re going to have to kill him. You have to stop him.”

Oren? But Oren was safe. Oren was human.

“I know it hurts. I know it hurts more than anything’s ever hurt before. But Lark, I know you’re in there, and you
have to open your eyes.
”

Suddenly everything
did
hurt. And with that pain came the realization that I wasn’t dead—but I wished I was. Agony split me starting from my arm, which I couldn’t move, and radiating throughout my body. I couldn’t feel my toes, my legs wouldn’t respond to my commands. My eyes opened to darkness broken only by flashes of magic. I screamed.

“There’s my girl.” It was Wesley. “Breathe. Just breathe.” His voice was tense with something I couldn’t recognize, but his hands were gentle, one resting against my cheek, the other against the shoulder less torn with agony than the other.

“Oren,” I groaned. “Oren?”

“The blackout device turned him,” said Wesley. “They’re trying to hold him off, but he’s too fast. The device stripped the magic out of the air and out of everyone else—we need you to stop him.”

I tried to find the magic within myself but there was nothing. The blackout device, Parker said, attacked unnatural magic. Magic stolen, magic installed—magic given. That’s why Oren had turned into a shadow. That’s why everything I had was gone.

“No—can’t.” I tried to move and screamed again, the sound tearing itself out of me before my overloaded mind could even register the pain. “Nothing left.”

As if my scream had summoned him, the monster that was Oren burst free of the Renewables trying to fight him and came at us, snarling. I couldn’t even scramble back, my body too broken to listen to my mind’s commands. The Orenshadow snapped its jaws a few inches from my face, hungry and desperate.

I closed my eyes. My only regret was that when this was over, they’d know what he was. They’d make him leave this place that had become home. He’d be alone. I waited for the blow, hoping that he’d kill me quickly, without more pain.

But it never came. I opened my eyes to find the monster inches away, the white eyes locked on mine, teeth bared in a snarl. It growled with each breath in and out as it stared at me, motionless. My good arm twitched and the monster growled—I fell still. No sudden movements.

The only other time I’d been so close to the creature was in the alleyway in the ruins Above, where the monster hesitated. But that was because my magic was working on it, turning it back into Oren. I had no magic now, nothing to bring Oren back into himself.

And yet, I was still alive. And he was still a shadow.

“Take my power.” Wesley shifted slowly, achingly slowly, so that both of his hands were touching my skin, one on my face and one on my neck. “Do it. Now.”

I wanted to protest, but the dark thing inside me had sensed his magic. It wanted him, the hunger rising so swiftly and violently that it shoved everything else aside, all conscience, all pain. I was the shadow, I was the darkness. And here was my salvation.

I pulled at the magic with all my strength, hungry, feasting. The Oren-monster howled, and I wanted to howl with him—the magic was life and death and everything in between, and it was
mine.

Dimly I heard Wesley screaming, trying to pull his hands away, but I held him motionless with a single thought. The air stank of fear, and the shadow inside delighted. I felt his heartbeat slow as the magic left him, felt his lungs struggle to rise just one more time. I watched with my true eyesight as the reserve of warm, heady magic inside him dwindled and faded, leaving an increasingly empty, black void.

Like Tansy.

I jerked, shoving Wesley away. The pain as I tried to move my shattered arm knocked me back into myself. I gasped, tasting blood. The lights had gone out while I drained Wesley—but I knew the Oren-monster was still there, snapping at me when I forced myself to sit up. His teeth closed on empty space—it was a warning, not an attack. I reached out with my other sight, feeling for the dark, empty pit in front of me that would be Oren. I eased out with my magic, trying to force it into the air faster. Willing him to change.

Abruptly the snarling stopped. Something moaned in the darkness—Wesley or Oren, I didn’t know. And then, silence.

I lay there, gasping, eyesight sparking, trying to make sense of the blackness. I was afraid to look around with my other sight again, for fear the temptation to attack the Renewables would be too strong.

Eventually a dim glow appeared overhead, visible first as a glowing red filament of glass, then brightening until I had to look away. Basil stood by one of the dark, lifeless banks of machines, one hand spread against the controls as he slowly fed power back into the lights. He was bruised, the side of his face swelling where he’d struck the wall, and his clothes were scorched, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. The Renewables were ranged on the opposite side of the room, looking around, finding each other. One was on the ground, bleeding heavily from his shoulder where Oren had scored a hit.

Wesley was half-propped against the monitors, arms wrapped around himself, white-faced and sunken-eyed. I expected him to look away in fear and loathing, but instead he met my eyes. He was shaking, his muscles tight and noncompliant, but with an effort he nodded just a little.

Well done.

One of the Renewables—Curio—helped me lean against the bottom of the catwalk railing. He had a row of parallel scratches across his chest, torn right through his clothing, but they were shallow. He seemed otherwise unscathed. When I looked away from him, trying to ignore the allure of his magic as the newly awakened monster inside me stirred, he retreated.

I closed my eyes. All I wanted was to sleep, to go somewhere my arm wasn’t on fire, where I hadn’t almost killed Wesley. I heard a buzz of wings, and a small weight landed on my good shoulder. Nix said nothing, but its tiny metal body was warm from the friction of its mechanisms, and it huddled close against the hollow of my throat.

Then a commotion jerked me awake again.

“Where is she? What did I—oh god, is she—”

Oren was back. They must’ve dragged his unconscious form away from me, because his voice came from some distance away. I opened my eyes in time to see him shove one of the Renewables aside hard enough for him to bounce off the railing, stunned. He saw me and came sprinting over, his long legs eating up the distance between us hungrily.

He threw himself down at my side, making me wince for the fate of his knees on the metal catwalk. Nix buzzed at him, irritated, and Oren snarled back, knocking the pixie off my shoulder. But he did it gently, I noticed—and the pixie gave an annoyed click of its wings and retreated to the railing, watching.

“Are you okay?” His voice was hoarse. There was blood on his face, on his clothes. When he reached out to touch my face, his fingers were tacky and warm.

“I think my arm is broken,” I whispered. “But I’m okay.”

“Did I—I remember you, in the darkness, I remember wanting to—” His voice broke, and he felt at my face, at my throat, checking me for injuries.

“You didn’t.” I wanted to reach for his hand, but my arm wouldn’t move right. “You could have, and you stopped yourself.”

He stared at me. “How?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. All your training. You controlled it, all on your own.”

Oren swallowed, brushing my hair out of my eyes with his fingertips. “When I saw you up there—I knew you were going to jump. How could you be so—” I could tell he wanted to grab me, touch me somehow, demonstrate his frustration with my foolhardiness, but he was afraid to hurt me. Instead he just gazed at me helplessly.

“I didn’t realize it would affect you. I’m so sorry, Oren, I didn’t—”

“You idiot!” he interrupted. “I meant, how could you be so stupid as to jump off a three-story catwalk? You could have broken your neck.”

“I had to stop Adjutant. He would’ve killed us all. I knew the impact would set off the blackout device and—”

Oren’s fingers were exploring my face, and as they reached my lips, my voice stuttered to a halt. I wondered what I must look like—bruised, battered, bleeding in various places. But alive. Alive.

“Just don’t ever do that again. Not when you’re too far away for me to save you.”

“I’ll try,” I whispered back.

Oren leaned down, brushing my hair aside, his lips touching my forehead for an instant before he broke away with a jerk. As if he’d forgotten himself, overcome—and now, remembering he wasn’t supposed to touch me.

It hurt, muscles all over my body screaming a protest, but I leaned up anyway, brushing my lips against his. It wasn’t much of a kiss, my arm radiating agony, his weariness evident in his every movement. But when I fell back again, hissing for my broken arm, he gazed at me, the pale blue eyes unreadable except for the surprise there.

“You’re bleeding,” he whispered, reaching out to trace his finger along my lip, where I’d bitten it in my agony.

I had to laugh, even though it was more of a groan than a laugh. “Now you know what it’s like to kiss someone who tastes like blood.”

Oren stared at me for a breath, and then, against all odds, he smiled—just for a moment, but it was there, and it was all for me.