Shattered Bonds (Jane Yellowrock)

by Faith Hunter

  I secured my weapons, such as they were, and hung the cell in the gobag as close to the cave opening as I could, hoping it would attract the attention of my backup. Weak, sick at the stomach, I ate two protein bars and managed to keep them down. I tore open a jerky strip and bit off a two-inch length, which I tucked into my cheek to soften. I hadn’t packed water. Stupid of me. And I saw no water in the cave.

  Now that I was human, I grasped the fact that I had no plan for rescue. I had flown in through the outer ward and killed the bad guy, but that wasn’t going to accomplish much once the wood ran out or EJ woke up or the Flayer’s pals appeared. I needed a part two, a how-to-get-home plan.

  The ward flashed again and I gripped my handgun. No one came through. Nothing changed. Weird. I wondered if the ward was set to flash periodically.

  To my side, Tex blinked. The skinned vamp took a breath. Let it out. That was too much movement for my peace of mind, what with the Flayer here. I managed to get across the cave, where I staked him low in the belly. He dropped like a marionette in inept hands. My friend was still alive-ish but paralyzed, and I’d not have to kill him true-dead. Hopefully he was also out of pain. I staked the female vamp too, giving me a safety net of time. Shoulda done that right away.

  Okay. That was an improvement in the no-plan problem. I was getting there.

  I walked to the witch and knelt in front of her. She was young, too young. Maybe fifteen. There were clasps on the silver cuffs and headband, and when I touched the handcuffs, a shaft of pain cut through me. I jerked back. Null cuffs. Great. This was gonna hurt. Steeling myself, I unclasped the headband and the cuffs. Tucked them into my gobag. Slowly she took a breath and her eyes fluttered open. She focused on me. She flinched.

  “I’m Jane Yellowrock.” I paused, and added, wryly, “The Dark Queen of the vampires. My friends are the Everhart witch clan. Do you understand me?”

  She gave an abbreviated nod and shuddered.

  “Who are you?”

  “Stacey Shooker,” she whispered.

  Shooker. Of the Asheville Shooker Witch Clan. Crap. So much for their reassurances that everything was okay with them. They had lied in the hope that their teenaged witchling might survive contact with the Flayer of Mithrans. Someone needed an education in when to tell the truth and ask for help.

  Stacey licked her cracked lips and looked around, her eyes darting. “Where is he?”

  “Dismembered. Part of him is out in the gorge. The rest is a mess in the back. I suggest you don’t look.”

  “Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god.” A tortured laughter rose in her throat and then choked off. Her breath made little flapping sounds. “Don’t look? I’ve seen shit this week. I don’t think you can shock me.”

  “I get that. Still.” I handed her a stick of jerky. “I don’t have any water.”

  “Better than nothing. Thanks.” Stacey looked around the cave again as she tore open the jerky, staring at the broken walls and the circle on the floor. “You got the kid out of the circle. Good. But how are we all getting out of here?”

  Annnnd we were back to the no-plan part. “Working on that. Besides you, how many witches does he have?”

  “Just me.”

  The ward flashed again, and this time something bright, like glowing charcoal, shifted across the back of the cave. I had seen that before, or something like it. “Has the ward been flashing?”

  “No. I never saw it do that.”

  I made it to my feet and went to the back of the cave, to the Flayer. His exoskeleton was solid, smooth, as if I had never busted it open. And . . . it had arms, which I had tossed out of the cave. That meant that the flashes were to a purpose, likely the result of the arms getting back inside. But how? Unless the horror movies had it right all along and they crawled back without a brain and nerves and muscles being attached to one another.

  Huffing through the pain, I picked up a pointed, sharp-edged boulder and brought it down with all my might onto the chest exoskeleton. The rock punctured through and I left it in the hole. I pulled the vamp-killer and brought it down on the Flayer’s fingers, separating them and carrying them to the fire. I tossed them in and watched them burn, a sizzling fast smell of scorched . . . scorched something. Not really meat. I had no idea what scorched insect smelled like. The scent made me want to hurl. I tossed the arm back out of the cave.

  “We have to go,” I said to the girl. She was short and not in shape. I’d be lucky if she could keep up, even with a sick me carrying EJ. Who took after his dad. Not a tiny four-year-old-ish kid. “Can you drop the cave shield?”

  “It’s mine, so, yeah.”

  I looked back at Shimon’s body. A stub was growing at the neck stump and the rock was being pushed out of the torso from the inside. Something dark gray flew across the back cave wall. “Get to it. And hurry. I got a bad feeling.”

  I made it to EJ and fell to my knees, the pain growing, and I nearly passed out as I tied the velvet cape around him to keep him warm and struggled to get him over my shoulder. I didn’t make it and he lay on my lap, limbs splayed.

  “Shield’s down. And no offense, but you look like shit. Like you’re gonna die any second,” Stacey said, from my side.

  “Pretty much,” I huffed, breathless from even that much exertion. “Cancer. Can you carry him?”

  “Yeah.” Stacey got EJ up and over her shoulder, grunting with the effort. She clearly wasn’t accustomed to being hungry, thirsty, or carrying a stout, heavy kid.

  At the entrance, we looked down a good fifteen feet to the floor of the crevice. It was covered with shattered rock and debris that had fallen from the cave and from overhead. I had no rope. No way could I get down and then catch either of my charges. Beast. You gotta give me half-form. I looked back over my shoulder. The head of the Flayer of Mithrans was no longer where I had placed it. The charcoal shadow moved across the back wall. Fast. Red eyes caught the firelight.

  “Holy crap,” I whispered, understanding at last. Kicking off my shoes, I demanded to Beast, “Shift!”

  “What?” Stacey said.

  “I’m a shape-shifter. I—”

  Beast opened the Gray Between. A tornado of knives opened with it. I began to shift. As I fell to the cave floor, the Flayer of Mithrans opened his eyes, watching me.

  * * *

  * * *

  It took way too long and I was beyond starving when I finally settled into my half-form, gagging from the pain, too bony, too skinny, and too sick to move. I was huffing and puffing and feeling as if I had been held down and suffocated with a pillow while being beaten with a baseball bat.

  “I put a stake in the belly of Beetle Man, but it popped out and hit me in the head.”

  I managed to get my eyes open, sort of focused, and looked up at Stacey, who had been talking. “Oh?”

  “I tossed his head out of the cave and ten minutes later it was back. And you got fur and fangs, just in case you didn’t know.”

  I managed some kind of a smile. “I noticed.” Ten minutes. I’d been out awhile. “And just so you know, we aren’t alone in here. We have a ghost, not that I believe in ghosts. But we have one.”

  “A gho—Oh. You mean the dark shadow.”

  I shook my head and made it to my feet. Strapped the gobag around me. I tore open the remaining jerky and shoved it in my mouth, which was too dry to soften the dried meat, but the taste was fantastic—which showed me how sick and calorie deprived I really was. I swallowed the leathery stuff whole and said, “I’m going to jump down. You’re going to toss EJ to me. I’ll set him down; then you jump. I’ll catch you.”

  “No way in hell.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll carry the kid down with me and leave you here.”

  Stacey gave me a scowl worthy of Molly. I’d have laughed if I’d had the energy. “I don’t know you,” she said, “but so far I don’t like you much.”
>
  I tightened the tie at the waist of my sweatpants. “Don’t care, but remember this. I didn’t come for you. I came for the kid. You’re just icing on the cake.” I bent to pick up EJ.

  “Fine. But if your hair falls out or you grow warts, you can blame me. I’m a witch and I’m pissed.”

  “Watch your language,” I said as I helped her with EJ, adjusting him in her arms. “Kid present.”

  “He’s asleep. And you sound like my mother.”

  “Good.” I leaned out the opening and chose how I’d get down. There were plenty of handholds and toeholds to the crevice floor. I grabbed the gobag holding the cell phone and pivoted my body, taking the first of the steps out of the cave. It didn’t take long, but I could feel magic in the air and I knew that the floaty charcoal thing was magical and operated independently of the Flayer. I had a bad feeling that whatever it was, it made Shimon Bar-Judas the Flayer of Mithrans, the Soul of Darkness, the Son of Deception, the Son of Shadows, et al. Son of Shadows. Right.

  At the bottom I positioned my feet so I could move in any direction. “Toss him.”

  Stacey tossed EJ over the lip of the cave. Time did that battlefield slowdown where everything happens in slow motion. I saw the cape flutter. Saw EJ’s hand flop out. Saw his bare feet. Saw when his body started to spin. I angled myself to the right and caught him, dropping down with him so gravity didn’t break his bones against my arms. I carried him across the rocks to the flat floor of the crevice and placed him on a wide, moss-covered boulder, retied the cloak over him, and went back to my place. “Jump.”

  Except there was no one there. No one replied. And I realized that Stacey had been taken by the Flayer of Mithrans. I raced to the stone and picked up my godson, tossed him over my left shoulder, and rushed back along the crevasse toward the point where I had dropped down in Anzu form.

  CHAPTER 21

  Tossed the Girl to the Rocks

  Stomach rumbling, body quivering from hunger, I dashed along the bottom of the crevasse. Deep in the hole, it was darker than any night I had ever experienced in my lives, both of them. Only with the enhanced night vision gifted to me by Beast did I manage to avoid deadfall, shattered stone, and openings and holes in the rock beneath me. But fear was a tangible presence at my back as I ran.

  I kept glancing up, looking for a faster way to the surface, one I could climb three-limbed, holding EJ. I finally saw one, and just hoped the rocks held. Tightening my arm around my godson, I leaped. Caught a rock protrusion. Swung to the toehold and shoved up. Trying to ignore the pain in my belly, I began the arduous climb to the surface.

  * * *

  * * *

  I fell on the snow, the cold agonizing at the top of the split in the earth. My lungs strained, breath painful. Gasping. When I could breathe, I rolled to my back and saw stars and the moon overhead. The clouds were breaking. I adjusted EJ on top of me for what warmth I could provide to him, and pulled the gobag off my chest. Found the cell. The call had been dropped, but I now had a signal. I dialed Alex. Felt into my middle. My fingers met something hard and pointed. Dudley. Dang. The tumor had found this shape too.

  “Jane!” Alex shouted into my cell.

  “I got EJ,” I said between hard breaths. “He’s spelled asleep but he’s breathing and nothing seems broken. At my current coordinates.”

  “Thank God,” Molly said over the connection. And she burst into tears.

  “Eli, Bruiser, and team are less then fifteen hundred feet from your current location,” Alex said. “But Molly talked to the local witches again and they admitted one of them was missing. The fanghead has a fifteen-year-old witch.”

  “Stacey. Yeah. I know. Which is why I’m leaving EJ here with the cell and going back down.”

  “Don’t you leave my baby!” Molly growled into the connection.

  “I have to buy Eli time to get him away. Only way to do that is to leave EJ and take on the Flayer.”

  “Jane, don’t,” Alex said.

  “We broke the circle at the Arboretum,” Evan said. “Even the humans are flayed. We think he can skin anything for his magic.”

  Anything. Even me. “Yeah. Okay.” Knowing that gave me more incentive to go back down, to get Stacey and to keep my people safe until they could get away. Gathering what little strength I still had, I rolled to my feet and started shuffling through the snow looking for a deep pile of fall leaves. It was dark, but my Beast-eyes had adjusted and the night seemed lighter than it really was. Quickly I found a depression filled with leaves and covered by snow, kicked it around to make sure nothing was nesting in it, then buried EJ, wrapped in his cape, in the leaves. I placed the cell on a branch near him and made sure the Glob was in my pocket and that my other weapons were secure.

  “Jane?” Alex said. “Jane! Jane!”

  I glanced at the cell and spotted Brute in the distance. Timewalking. I wasn’t sure how I knew he was timewalking, but he was, and not the way I did it. A grindy was on his shoulder, holding fistfuls of hair. Seeing them meant that EJ would have protection and fast.

  Overhead, I heard a soft whirring, and I waved at a flying drone. It tilted itself back and forth at me, acknowledging that the pilot, wherever he was, could see me. Drones with low-light vision. Handy. The drone operator knew my exact coordinates now and my tracks would lead them to the easiest way down.

  I turned my back to it and stepped off the edge, into the crevasse. Caught my weight one-handed and swung, like a howler monkey, to another protrusion. Dropping down and down, hands secure on the damp rocks. Plummeting into the dark.

  At the bottom of the rock walls, I raced back through the crevasse. It took too long, and I knew Stacey was in danger. Knew Bruiser and Eli would follow, but would need lights and climbing equipment. I’d be on my own for a while, unless the team they led included vampires willing to face the Flayer of Mithrans. And the red-eyed shadow-whatever-it-was that was doing magic all around him.

  It seemed to take a lot longer to make my way back to the stone floor below the cave entrance. I was exhausted and starving and wanted nothing more than to stop, lie down, and rest. But when I looked up, I saw the last Son of Darkness, the Flayer of Mithrans, standing at the top of the cave. He was holding Stacey in his arms. Before I could react, he dropped the shield and tossed the girl to the rocks.

  I dove for her. Caught her head and shoulders but not her legs, which smashed into the knife-edged shattered boulders. A bone broke with a sharp snap. I smelled her blood. Felt the heated squish of her skinless flesh. She had been skinned. I bent, setting her to the side.

  The world tumbled around me.

  The Flayer of Mithrans landed on me.

  We toppled across the dark stone. I pulled on my skinwalker strength and speed. Beast shoved her own unique power into me. I grappled with the creature, but he was all smooth exoskeleton except for the joints, but any spaces were too narrow for my bony fingers. As we tumbled, my claws extruded and clamped into his shoulder joint. I ripped. He got his one good chitinous hand on my vamp-killer and snapped it free. He stabbed forward, three sharp blows. Aiming directly into my middle. Pulling on Beast-speed, I slid left, right, left, fast, and the blade caught the sides of my waist, slicing instead of stabbing. I didn’t think I’d get away with that one again.

  I reached up and found his temple, rolled my hand up and discovered the rough place where I had broken his skull. It wasn’t completely healed. I shoved my fingers into the depression and the shell cracked under them. I shoved my hand into his brain. Clawed through it.

  He laughed.

  And stabbed me again. Right into the center of Dudley.

  I grunted, a deep, broken sound. My blood gushed out. My energy pulsed out with it. Surging. Spurting. He’d sliced the tumor and hit an artery. My hand fell from his brain. My body went limp.

  Shimon dropped me and the vamp-killer, scrabbled around my neck. Reaching fo
r Soul, trapped in her crystal. If I let him get her, she was lost. If I let him timewalk, I was lost, and so was Stacey.

  His fingers were cold and hard as they fumbled on my neck and chest. His insect claws couldn’t grasp Soul’s crystal. He needed both hands and the fingers I had burned. He hissed in frustration; the stench of his breath was bitter and caustic, burning my eyes.

  A cutting icy pain curled along my right shoulder. Shimon skinned a strip of flesh off of me. Something scrabbled at my skull, thrusting through, pushing on the dark places of my mind. The Flayer had other titles, the Son of Shadows. The shadow had to be the thing that had been racing around in the Regal at our first meeting, and again in the cave. It didn’t perfectly fit the definition of a ghost. Early on I had gotten the impression that it was a creature, was alive. I turned my magic to see the thing better.

  The shadow shaped into a spear point and pierced into my mind. In a single instant it all came clear. The memory/vision of the bloody body on the bloody wood as the Sons of Darkness sacrificed their sister to bring their father back. Biting through her fingers. The Son of Shadows had eaten the girl alive. Black magic. Blood magic. The most heinous of dark magics. And by that rite, he had taken in the soul of his sister. She was the insane shadow in his mind. The trapped soul of his sister.

  Had the witch circle given her autonomy? Had the time magics Shimon was using given her extra power too?

  Shimon encircled my throat and began to crush the life out of me. Not just suffocate me. But crush my head from my shoulders.

  I had one weapon left. I slid my brain-sludged hand down my body, into my pocket. Grabbed the Glob. My star magics stuttered. Twisted. Pain shot through me as my magics, now cut through with the steel blade, tried to realign and sought out the power in the Glob. When it wanted to, the Glob absorbed magical energies, and the shadow was energy. Not a magic I had ever seen, but still, energy. With the last of my strength, I shoved the Glob into the cranial cavity of the Son of Darkness, the Flayer of Mithrans.