by Zoe Chant
Natalie bit down on her lip again, suppressing her shock. Expect anything. Anything!
She didn’t know what Ransom intended to do, but the shadows caught him before he could do it. All she saw was him making a quick movement, then falling to his knees. The shadows rippled around him in a way that she couldn’t help interpreting as eagerness. Or worse, hunger.
“Don’t try to trick me,” said Elayne. Her voice was as cold and inhuman as the shadows. “My offer still stands. I can take away your guilt. I can even take away the memory. It’ll hurt, but only for a short while. And then you’ll never hurt again.”
He struggled fiercely, but to no avail. The shadows rose around him, oozing up to catch his hands and lock them against his sides. Natalie could do nothing but watch helplessly as he sank down, sweating and gasping and mired in darkness.
“I thought as much,” said Elayne. “You really do care about her. What an unfortunate complication. That’s why I went to the motel where she was staying, before you went on your little trip. I was going to remove her from the equation. But you got ahead of me. It took us this long to track you down.”
Remove me from the equation, Natalie thought with a shudder. Ransom really had saved her life.
Elayne went on, “She’s your mate, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” Ransom’s voice was hoarse, but his gaze was calm. “I’d die before I’d hurt her. And if you try to hurt her, I’ll fight to the death to save her, and then I’ll be dead and of no use to you.”
“I’d prefer you dead than of no use to me,” said Elayne sharply. “As you’ve no doubt figured out, I can’t alter your emotions if you fight me. I need you to surrender control and let me do it.”
“Never,” said Ransom.
With an eerie false cheer, Elayne said, “Never say never.”
She raised her hand, and the shadows rose to swallow Natalie. They oozed up her body, slick and cold, until she too had her hands trapped. She could do nothing but watch as Elayne strode across them. They dimpled beneath her feet, as if she was a water strider skating across a pond.
“Don’t touch her!” Ransom shouted. “I’ll do whatever you want!”
Elayne paused. She was so close that Natalie could have raised a hand and slapped her, if her hands weren’t trapped.
“Ransom, don’t!” Natalie called back. Tears slid down her cheeks, hot as the shadows were cold, as she said, “It doesn’t matter! I’m dying anyway. Don’t throw away your own life!”
“I’ll do it!” Ransom yelled. “Elayne! I accept!”
“No, don’t, don’t!” shouted Natalie. “Don’t you dare!”
Elayne clapped her hands sharply. “If you don’t both stop yelling, I’ll gag you with shadows.”
Natalie closed her mouth so quickly that her teeth snapped together. Ransom’s face was white against the darkness that trapped him.
“Luckily for me, I’m not alone,” said Elayne. “And I brought someone who can help me determine the truth. Costello!”
Another woman walked out from between a pair of tomato-shaped tents. Costello wore a black shirt and pants—made of cloth, not shadows—and looked tough but in an ordinary way, like a security guard or a soldier. She edged around the shadows that Elayne was controlling until she could look at Ransom straight-on from about six feet away.
“Now answer me again,” said Elayne. “Do you accept my offer?”
“If you don’t harm Natalie, yes,” he said.
“He’s lying,” said Costello.
“I’m not,” said Ransom. “She’s wrong.”
Elayne shot an annoyed look at him. “She can’t be wrong. It’s one of her Ultimate Predator powers. One last chance. If you agree to let me into your mind, will you use the opportunity to try to attack me or escape with your mate?”
“No,” said Ransom.
“Lying again,” said Costello.
“That woman is playing some kind of game with you, Elayne,” said Ransom. “Maybe she wants to be the Dark Knight.”
Natalie kept her expression blank, but inwardly, she cheered him on. It probably wouldn’t work, but it was a good try.
Elayne gave an exasperated sigh, then reached into her coat pocket and removed a syringe filled with a cloudy liquid. Natalie jerked backward, or tried to; the shadows clung tight, holding her still.
Natalie spat in Elayne’s face.
Elayne let out a shriek of shock and fury. The shadows holding Natalie felt less tight. She put all the strength she had into leaping free. For a second, she thought she’d succeeded. Then she fell over, caught around the ankles and wrists. At the same moment, Ransom lunged forward, but also went sprawling.
But in the midst of her fear and anger, Natalie saw something that gladdened her heart. The shadows had left Wally to surge up around the humans.
“Go!” Natalie yelled. “Go to Heidi!”
Elayne whipped around, but she was too late. Wally had vanished.
Lying on the ground, trapped in clammy shadows like quicksand, unable to touch each other or fight back, Natalie and Ransom looked at each other and took comfort in their shared relief.
“What a good doggo,” she said.
“You saved him,” said Ransom. “You nearly saved all of us.”
A sharp, small pain like a bee sting stabbed Natalie’s upper arm. Elayne straightened up, the empty syringe in her hand.
A fear even colder than the shadows clenched around Natalie’s heart. “What was that?”
“For you?” Elayne’s lip curled. “Death. Unless your mate takes my offer.”
“Poison?” asked Ransom. He could do nothing to fight back, but if Natalie had been Elayne, she’d have run. The chill in his voice and eyes reminded her that in the Marines, he’d been a sniper.
“Adrenaline,” said Elayne. “Altered with a little chemistry and a little magic. The effect is slower, but more intense. For a normal person, it would be unpleasant but not dangerous: like a severe panic attack. For someone with a heart condition, no amount of deep breathing and calming thoughts can save them.”
Natalie clamped down on her panic. For all she knew, the syringe had been filled with colored water and Elayne was just messing with her.
But she could feel her heart speeding up.
Elayne snapped her fingers. Two men and a woman came out, all in black pants and shirts like Costello. Of the men, one was big as a pro wrestler, and one was normal-tough like Costello. The woman was skinny, even wispy, and didn’t look at all like a fighter.
“Norris, get him in shiftsilver cuffs,” said Elayne to the big man. “Regular for her. I’ll clear a path.”
Elayne gestured, and the shadows oozed aside, allowing her people to get to Ransom and Natalie. She gestured again, and the cold, clinging shadows withdrew from their wrists… but not their hands. Natalie ground her teeth in frustration as Norris cuffed Ransom and Costello cuffed her.
Only then did Elayne gesture to make all her shadows vanish. She staggered, panting, and Costello grabbed her shoulder.
“I’m fine,” snapped Elayne, shaking her off. But she stealthily leaned against a stall.
Natalie would have been glad to see that Elayne could only control her shadows for so long, and that doing so drained her. But she had other things to worry about. Her heart was pounding, and she felt short of breath. A cold sweat was making her clothes stick to her body. And hard as she tried to stay calm and breathe deeply, she was terrified.
“Chain them up in the bomb shelter,” said Elayne. She put a walkie-talkie in Ransom’s hand. “You have half an hour or so to wrestle with your conscience. If you can honestly tell me that you’ll join me, hit the button to call in. Costello will come down and make sure you’re telling the truth. If you are, I’ll give your mate the antidote. And I’ll give her something else too: a cure.”
“Liar! There is no cure!” Natalie’s voice came out breathless and shrill, not forceful like she’d intended.
“I can command shadows,” said
Elayne, still addressing Ransom. “I can take away your pain and your memories. You think I can’t fix her heart?”
“How?” said Ransom.
“Magic,” said Elayne. “And science. I could give you all the details, but it would take more time than she has. Think about it.”
The next thing Natalie knew, she and Ransom were being dragged into the History of the Tomato tent, then down the stairs. She wanted to kick Elayne’s minions in the shins, but with their hands cuffed, a fall down the stairs could break her neck. Or worse, Ransom’s.
Dim emergency lights illuminated the carriages and animatronic figures. Costello and Norris shoved Ransom and Natalie to the ground, then used two more pairs of handcuffs to lock them to the tomato carriage track by their ankles. They were taking no chances on getting jumped. Then they went back up the stairs and slammed the door, leaving Ransom and Natalie alone on the floor.
They strained toward each other, but they were too far away to touch. Natalie subsided, dizzy from the effort.
“About your heart—” Ransom began.
“Don’t even think of taking her offer! She’d use you to kill innocent people. And I don’t believe she has a cure, anyway.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He was trying his hardest to sound calm, but she could hear the fear and anger beneath it, like an undercurrent. “I love you, and I’m not going to let you die.”
She knew he wanted her to promise that she wouldn’t. But she couldn’t let her last words be a lie. “I love you.”
He looked at her like he’d heard her thoughts, and wanted to argue with her. The he shook his head. “I’m going to use my power to find out how to save you. Lie still and breathe. It’ll only take a minute or so.”
He closed his eyes. But Natalie didn’t lie still. He’d already tried to use his power that way, and it hadn’t worked. It wasn’t going to be any different now. But she refused to die until she could save him.
If she’d had her legs free, she’d have already been out of the handcuffs. All she’d have needed to do was push her legs up and back through the ring of her arms until her cuffed hands were in front of her body, remove her lockpicks from the secret pocket inside her bra, and open the cuffs.
With one ankle locked to the track, it was more difficult. It was especially more difficult when her heart was staggering like a drunk, she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs, and that damn adenaline-induced panic kept threatening to overwhelm her. But Ransom wasn’t close enough to reach the lockpicks. She was the only one who could save him.
“Houdini would be out by now,” Natalie muttered to herself as she worked one leg back between her arms.
She twisted her body until her shoulder threatened to come out of its socket, and managed to extract the lockpicks with her left hand. Of course it had to be the left. But she’d practiced working with her off-hand, and though it wasn’t easy, she managed to get her own cuffs open.
After that, it was quick work to unlock her foot, then go to Ransom and unlock him. As she opened the cuff around his ankle, his eyes opened. There were creases of pain around them, and they looked sadder than ever.
“You didn’t get anything?”
His bleak expression was the answer. “I could try again—”
“How many times have you tried asking that question?”
“A couple,” he muttered, which she supposed was code for “I laid myself out in excruciating pain repeatedly, and always for nothing.” Then he glanced down. “You got us loose.” A desperate light burned in his eyes. “Forget my power. Let me bite you. It might work. It’s a small chance, but—”
That again. The same small chance, the same might that he’d been talking about from the very beginning.
This is going to break his heart, she thought. Hoping and then being disappointed was the worst pain in the world.
But he’d never give up until he saw for himself that it wouldn’t work. If she let him try, once he saw that it had failed, then he could turn his attention to escape. Natalie couldn’t let him die because she was too stubborn to say yes.
“Do it,” she said.
He got up and stepped back. The room filled with the smell of woodsmoke, and the great hound loomed over her. He bent down—she could feel the heat of his fiery eyes—and bit her at the junction of the neck and the shoulder.
Then Ransom was back, lifting her into his arms. “I thought I should get it as close to your brain and heart as I could, in case that makes it work faster. It should only take a minute or so. It doesn’t hurt too badly, does it?”
“No.” A cold numbness had spread through her body. She’d barely felt his teeth go in. She couldn’t feel the heat of his arms, either. All she could feel was her heart, fluttering more and more weakly within her chest, and the painful laboring of her lungs.
He held her close, his cheek pressed to hers, while they waited. Finally, he said, “Do you feel anything?”
She shook her head.
“This has to work!” Ransom shouted. His eyes were wild, his calm shattered. “It has to!”
The agony in his voice tore at her heart. If only she could live for him. If only she could bring herself back the way she’d brought him back, with a kiss…
The memory of that kiss was more vivid in her mind than anything happening in the present. The freezing water, the cold of his lips, the faint taste that must have been shiftsilver, metallic and burning…
Natalie fumbled inside her bra. Her fingers touched the vial of shiftsilver, but couldn’t grasp it.
“Help me,” she whispered, but couldn’t go on.
She could barely hear her own voice. But at least she wouldn’t need to explain her idea to Ransom. As soon as he saw what she had, he’d immediately know what she was thinking: if a bite alone couldn’t change her, maybe the shiftsilver could send her deep enough to find her inner hellhound and draw it out.
The darkness had closed in on her. She couldn’t see him, but she felt his hands over hers as he took the vial from her, opened it, and held it to her lips. She swallowed. It tasted like metal and burned going down.
And then she was somewhere else. Natalie blinked into the bright afternoon sunlight. Dust swirled around her ankles, powdery as flour.
She looked down at herself, half-expecting to see a child’s body. But no, she was her adult self… but dressed in that same faded dress she’d worn as a child. She touched her hair and found the short tousled cut she always had. Suspicious, she pulled a lock into view. It was her natural shade, the yellow-brown of dust.
Slowly, she raised her head, certain of what she’d see. And there it was. The big, beautiful house. Natalie shuddered. She’d rather walk into Elayne’s shadows than go back inside that house, but she somehow knew that her hellhound was in it.
There was no point delaying. Her body was dying, and she had to move fast if she was going to save herself. Natalie ran headlong at the house.
Abruptly, she was inside. In the basement, a room where the kids had sometimes been sent to fetch things. It was dark, with the shelves of stuff barely visible.
“Hello?” Natalie called.
What do you want? The voice was a low growl that was nonetheless distinctly female.
“You. I want you.”
An impatient snort echoed in the darkness. What do you want?
“I want to live.”
What will you give?
“Uh… My love?”
An even more impatient snort. What will you risk?
This wasn’t how she had expected the encounter to go, and she could feel the seconds ticking away. Ransom had only had to pet his hellhound, not play the world’s most nervewracking game of Twenty Questions.
“My life?”
A long, unnerving growl made the jars on the shelves rattle. Your life. The life you refuse to believe can be saved.
“But I do believe it! I let Ransom bite me. And here I am.”
That reply was met with silence. Apparently her hellh
ound was sulking.
Natalie thought frantically. What was she doing wrong? Was she supposed to go into the darkness and pet her hellhound? Apart from the shelves around her, she couldn’t see a thing. For all she knew, there was no floor, except for the bit she was standing on. A single step forward might send her plunging into a bottomless pit.
Whatever she did, she had to do it fast. Ransom must be losing his mind, sitting in the darkness with her limp body. He’d be so disappointed if he couldn’t save her, after he’d been reckless enough to keep on hoping…
“Oh,” Natalie whispered. “That’s what you want.”
The growl that rattled the shelves sounded encouraging. Or maybe challenging.
What her hellhound wanted from her was hope. To save her own life—to save Ransom from falling back into despair—to have any chance of having a life with him—Natalie had to do the one thing that terrified her. She had to believe in the possibility that she might live. And not only for a little while longer, but for an entire lifetime.
She had to believe that she might have everything she’d ever wanted, and that believing in it wouldn’t mean it would immediately be snatched away.
She had to hope so hard that being disappointed would feel worse than dying. And if she was disappointed, she couldn’t just die and be done with it all. She’d have to endure that pain, get up, and hope again.
Natalie thought of Ransom, waiting for her in the dark. And she closed her eyes and stepped forward, hoping to touch soft fur.
Chapter 25
Ransom cradled Natalie in his arms. She was so cold, and he could barely feel her breathing. He’d bitten her, but nothing had happened. He’d helped her with her brilliant idea to drink tincture of shiftsilver, but still nothing had happened.
A bark cut through the silence. Wally appeared beside them, a ball of white in the dimness. He whined urgently as he nuzzled Natalie, but she didn’t stir.
Just a small chance of saving her, Ransom thought. That’s all I ever had.
The darkness of despair tugged at him, like an undertow dragging him into a cold and empty sea. It was dreadful, but also tempting. If he gave in to it, at least the endless, excruciating struggle would be over.