The Shadow Paradox: The Shadow Enforcer Series Book Three

by N M Thorn

  The demon howled and spun toward him, cutting the air with its talons. Damian kept backing away from it, using every opportunity he had to inflict an injury on his opponent. But even though his every strike reached the target, he had no doubt—he wouldn’t be able to hold the Navij for long. For a short while, he danced around the monster, trying to deliver as much damage as he could. But the energy of the Dark Nav it emanated was feeding on his life-force and elemental energy, and every next move he made came with more effort than the previous one.

  “Stop fighting, Child of Earth,” the deep, grinding voice boomed in his mind as the Navij spoke again, sounding as though it was trying to reason with him. “You’re old and smart enough to know you can’t fight me. Now, that I have a human body to anchor myself to the realm of humans, I’m unstoppable. Even Chernobog himself no longer has power over me.”

  The Navij cackled, and for a brief moment, the darkness retreated, giving Damian a glimpse of the demon’s new appearance. A ghastly version of Donna Luna hovered a few feet above the floor, supported by the dirty, leathery wings. She was at least eight feet tall, and her sharply angled demonic eyes with the vertical pupils of a serpent shone with a deep purple light. While her features still kept some semblance to her former self, there was nothing human about her looks. Her talons were smeared with blood—his blood—and a predatory snarl stretched her black lips, showing off a set of sharp fangs. Her long tail resembling that of a dragon swiped angrily from side to side, wrapping around her legs.

  “I’m the Dark Nav, and the Children of Elements can’t survive my embrace,” continued the monster. “Give up, boy. You have no chance against me. You’re too weak, and the closer I’m to you, the weaker you become. You’re too slow, and once I touch you… ohhh…” The monster’s voice faded into a nearly ecstatic, harsh breath as it reached forward with its bloody talon. “Drop your weapons, and I may take mercy on you. I’ll let you die fast. You know I’m right.”

  Damian lowered his daggers, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths, sweat dripping down his flushed face and back, plastering the remains of his shirt to his body.

  “I know,” he replied calmly. “You’re right. I can’t kill you. Supposedly, it’s impossible to kill a Navij, but I’ll be damned if I don’t try.” He raised his daggers again, assuming a fighting stance. “Yeah, I’m slow and weak compared to you, but—”

  “But I’m not!”

  Ringing with suppressed fury, a familiar voice boomed behind Damian, causing him to spin around. His brother stood in a partially destroyed doorway with his sword in his hand. Damian had seen Cole angry on more than one occasion. He had seen him fight with his full vampiric force more than once, but never had he seen his brother like this.

  With his shirt partially unbuttoned and ripped on his chest, he was covered in splatters of dried blood, and his entire body was producing a soft red glow of magical energy. The sword in his hand was glowing as brightly as his scarlet eyes, and Damian couldn’t understand how Cole could channel magic when he knew for a fact that the magical energy was still blocked. A massive gargoyle in its natural form stood by his side, the low rumble of a continuous growl vibrating in his solid-rock chest, and Cole’s fingers were stroking Zhulik’s back automatically.

  “I believe this belongs to me.” Giving Damian a curt nod, Cole held out his hand, pointing at the second sword that Donna Luna had dropped on the floor earlier. The weapon started to vibrate, igniting with a deep ultramarine light, and then vanished, reappearing immediately in Cole’s hand. He squeezed its grip, raising both swords, and as he did that, a brilliant white light flooded the room.

  The Navij hissed, pulling away from the light, and Cole laughed in response, switching into a full-force attack.

  “How dare you threaten my brother?” he roared, crashing his swords at the demon. “Maybe he’s slower and weaker than you, but as God is my witness, I am not! And I will take pleasure in taking you down, part by goddamn part, you fuckin demonic scumbag.”

  Fighting with two swords in the best style of Roman dimachaeri, Cole moved at his full vampire speed, and the Navij had no choice but to respond in kind. Soon, both turned into blur barely perceptible by a human eye, and only by using his other sight could Damian see at least some bits of the blood-curdling fight unfolding in the destroyed room.

  “Stay out of the way, Commander. Let the big dogs do the talking,” Zhulik growled and joined the confrontation, assailing the demon from its other side to give Cole a few seconds’ reprieve.

  Damian pressed his back to the wall and shifted to the side, inching his way toward the exit. He wasn’t going to leave his brother alone, but he also knew it was impossible to kill a Navij. The only thing Cole could do was to keep it busy long enough for him to figure out how to block the exit out of the bunker and then send this malevolent creature of the Dark Nav back into the hellhole it had been summoned from.

  He stepped through the threshold into the hallway littered with pieces of concrete and assorted debris and glanced up. Now that the Navij was preoccupied with Cole and Zhulik, the darkness wasn’t as thick as before, and he could see the giant hole in the ceiling with a shaft leading to the outside world. He had to close it. No matter what would happen next, he couldn’t let the Navij escape back into the realm of humans.

  Damian put his daggers on the floor by the wall and took a deep breath, focusing on the task at hand. Gathering all his strength, he channeled the elemental energy of Earth. The floor quaked, responding to his power, and the muscles of his arms and shoulders strained as if he were trying to lift something heavy.

  He raised his arms and redirected the flow of energy toward the shaft. A loud, grinding noise filled the room, overwhelming the cacophony of the fight, rising over the shrills of the demon and growls of the gargoyle. A shower of small pieces of rocks, slivers of wood, and warped rods fell through the hole, and a murky curtain of dust veiled the fighters.

  The walls started to close gradually, the patch of the sky high above the surface no longer visible. Damian screamed and brought his arms together, placing his remaining strength into the last push, and the hole closed up, cutting the Navij’s only way out. The demon jerked back, putting some distance between himself and Cole, and raised its ugly head, staring at the blocked hole with an expression that could have been described only as a mix of annoyance and apprehension.

  “What did you do, Child of Earth?” it hissed, saliva dripping from its fangs. “You locked yourself, your brother and this annoying pest of yours here, underground, with me. I thought you loved your brother.” The demon cackled, spreading his arms wide. “Or is that a form of… um… what do you humans call it? A murder-suicide?”

  Breathing heavily, Damian couldn’t say anything, barely keeping the upright position. Instead, Cole stepped forward.

  “No, asshole,” the vampire replied calmly. “It’s not a murder-suicide. It’s just me killing you.”

  With his arms spread wide, he leaped in the air, and Damian could swear for a few endless seconds, his brother levitated there, his swords blazing with an eye-watering light. He watched Cole swing his swords in a cross motion, the blades cutting through the demon’s thick neck like it was a flabby pudding. A blood-chilling shrill of pain and shock erupted from the Navij’s deformed mouth. Cole dropped to the floor softly like a giant cat, landing on one knee, and brought his terrifying weapons down.

  The Navij’s form started to shrink until it reached a normal human size. Its wings and tail turned to dust, and for a moment, Donna Luna stood there, gazing at Cole with wide-open eyes, death already imprinted in the blackness of her expanding pupils. A horrendous visage of the demon, composed of slowly evaporating demonic essence, appeared over her like a dark, menacing shadow, spreading its wings to their full extent. She lifted her hand, reaching toward Cole, her lips moving like in a last prayer. Then her appearance changed again into that of a demon.

  For a heartbeat, Damian couldn’t breathe. Killing a Navij
wasn’t possible. It could’ve only been compared to killing a god, yet he was watching the demon’s head roll off its shoulders, falling to the floor. Its body followed less than a second later. The demonic essence of the Navij twisted over it, spinning into a mini-tornado, and Damian couldn’t help but stare at it in disbelief.

  His brother had managed to do the impossible—he had destroyed an indestructible monster, but Damian knew better. In the case of creatures of the Dark Nav, nothing stayed dead for long. Before his eyes, the body of the monster started to disintegrate with a light hissing noise, turning into a pile of disgusting, gray flakes. The flakes lifted a few inches off the floor, starting to rotate counterclockwise slowly, and with desperate clarity, Damian realized what was coming next.

  He dropped to his knees, gathering every scrap of elemental energy he still had in his drained body, and then tapped into his internal resources. A strained scream broke from his lips, and his entire body arched as he spread his arms wide. A large dome of pure elemental energy encapsulated the quickly transforming remains of the Navij, his brother and the gargoyle. The rotation came to a full halt, and time itself seemed to slow down.

  Cole lowered to his knees next to him, the scarlet glow vanishing from his eyes. “Dima, what are you doing?”

  “Cole,” said Damian, his voice hoarse with strain. “Please, listen to me, and for once, do as I say.”

  Cole moved to say something, but Damian gave him a barely visible shake no.

  “Don’t interrupt. We don’t have time. You killed a Navij… don’t know how… But the monsters of the Dark Nav don’t vanish after death. They transform… I can see the transformation has already started. Its body will morph into hundreds, if not thousands, of phantoms. Don’t get me wrong—it’s better to deal with phantoms than with a Navij, but…” He took a short breath, channeling more of his energy into the giant dome he was holding. “I can’t leave phantoms in the bunker because sooner or later they will find their way to the surface through the vents or some other way… Can’t have it… thousands of people will die if I fail…”

  “I’m sorry… I had no idea…” Cole frowned, clutching his swords.

  “Not your fault… Mine… I wasn’t ready to deal with a Navij,” whispered Damian. “I didn’t know either.”

  “What do you need me to do?” asked Cole quietly.

  “The shield I’m holding is slowing down the flow of time a little, and it takes all my energy and strength. I can’t hold it for much longer, but I know what I need to do to deal with these phantoms,” replied Damian, speaking as fast as he could. “I need you to take Zhulik and go to the surface. Zhulik can teleport both of you out of here. I have two gods, two high-level mages and a Child of Earth blocking all the magical energy in Downtown Phoenix.”

  He took a short breath as the room started to spin around him in a slow and nauseating motion, his vision going in and out of focus.

  “Cole, I need you to find all five of them as fast as you can,” he continued. “Zhulik knows the points… Tell them to restore the flow of magic as soon as possible and block the area above the bunker—the most powerful shield they can conjure… If I’m to survive, I need all the magic I can get.”

  “Dima, what are you talking about? You’re an immortal Child of Earth,” Cole whispered, his hands shaking slightly. “You can’t—”

  “You just killed an immortal, god-like demon, Cole. There is no such thing as unconditional immortality,” Damian replied, sweat dripping down his face.

  “No… please…” Cole whispered—a barely audible sound filled with anguish and despair.

  Damian sighed, gazing at his brother with warmth. “Please, listen to me. I love you, little bro. I always have, and I always will. You’re strong… so much stronger than I am… and smarter, too…” A faint smile touched his lips. “You can do it. The future of the human realm depends on you now. So, please go and let me do my duty as a Destiny Enforcer…”

  “Dima, I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can, Nikolai… The faster you move, the bigger the chance I’ll survive. Restore the flow of magic in Downtown—save the world.” He switched his attention to his gargoyle. “Zhulik, you and Cole are leaving now. Go. It’s an order!”

  “I’ll see you on the surface, Commander,” said Zhulik, inclining his head.

  Cole placed his hand on the gargoyle’s back, and both vanished with a light pop.

  Damian dropped the shield of elemental energy and nearly collapsed. With sheer effort of will, he pulled himself to his feet. The flakes resumed their rotation, moving faster and faster, quickly transforming into hundreds of semi-transparent phantoms.

  All of a sudden, the rotation ceased, and for a moment shorter than a heartbeat, the flock of phantoms imploded in on itself, disappearing from view. Then the floor shook, rocks falling from the barricade Damian had created to block the tunnel in the ceiling, and hundreds of fully formed phantoms manifested in midair. Looking like giant black birds with iron beaks and semi-transparent bodies, they screeched all at once and then stilled, their menacing, black eyes glaring at Damian without blinking.

  “Good little birdies,” muttered Damian. “Now, try to follow me.”

  He pivoted on his heels and ran along the partially demolished hallway as fast as his drained body would allow. He wasn’t certain where he was going, but according to Cole, there was only one more room in this entire hallway, so he couldn’t miss it. Every next step he took required more effort, and he wasn’t sure he could reach the room before the phantoms caught up with him.

  Cole, please, faster, brother mine… I need my magic…

  Far ahead, in the darkness of the hallway, he noticed the black rectangle of a broken door and doubled his effort, his feet hitting the floor with heavy thumps, each step resonating through his worn-out body. Abruptly, a sharp pain pierced his chest, and he felt like his heart was about to explode. He slowed down and came to a halt. Pressing his hand to his chest, he glanced back, trying to understand what had just happened.

  He was just a few steps away from the door, but the dark cloud of phantoms had caught up with him. He was out of strength, out of elemental energy, and the flow of magic was still blocked. The bird-like monsters of the Dark Nav swooped down at him, tearing his flesh with their iron beaks and talons, aiming at his eyes. But as one of the phantoms flew through his chest, phasing out on the other side, the same spike of pain twisted his insides, sending his heart into overdrive. He cried out and dropped to his knees. The phantoms kept attacking him, phasing in and out of his convulsing body. He fell to his side and curled into a tight ball, covering his head with his arms.

  Cole… please…

  The change came so suddenly that he didn’t recognize what had happened right away. The phantoms froze in mid-air, their beaks open in mute shrieks. For a split second, absolute silence engulfed the bunker. A powerful gust of wind rushed through the hallway, and something impacted Damian on his chest with a mighty force. His arms unlocked as he turned to his back, and his body arched like a tightly stretched bow. He screamed, but it wasn’t in pain.

  It was pure joy.

  The flow of magical energy was restored, and it filled his drained body, partially reviving his strength and charging him like an adrenaline shot. He got up to his feet and spread his arms, his daggers manifesting in his hands.

  “Illucious,” he yelled, swinging his blades at the cloud of phantoms.

  At the touch of the purifying light of Creation, the phantoms hissed and disintegrated into cold flakes of ash, soundlessly floating to the floor. But there were just too many of them, and fighting them with his daggers wasn’t an option. The door he needed was within his reach, so he turned around and bolted toward it. He rushed through the threshold into the dark room.

  The nauseating reek of decay hit him like a sledgehammer, but he ignored it and headed toward the three massive cylindrical contraptions filled with the pure energy of magic. He came to a screeching halt in front of the
cylinder in the middle and snapped around, waiting for the phantoms to catch up with him.

  As the phantoms filled the room, Damian turned back toward the cylinders.

  “Exitius!” he shouted, pointing at the glass, but his spell hit the shining surface of the cylinders without doing any damage. He channeled as much magical energy as his drained and injured body could hold and tried again, increasing the potency of his spell. “Exitius Amplio!”

  Dammit!

  The cylinders deflected his magic and elemental power, and there was nothing he could do. The phantoms swooshed down, assailing him from all directions, phasing in and out of his body. He groaned, struggling to keep his mind clear despite the continuous torment the phantoms inflicted on him.

  I failed… An agonizing thought flashed through his mind. Again.

  He squeezed his head with his hands, his fingers digging into the mass of his matted hair. In a last-ditch effort, he channeled his magic again and connected with the energy within, praying to all the gods he knew to help him. Something twitched in his chest, and an unusual cold wave spread through his body, freezing him from the inside.

  His wings opened up of their own accord, and before he knew it, he was levitating a few feet above the ground. The pain was gone. There were no more fears or worries, and just now he noticed that the phantoms ceased their relentless assaults and cowered away. They surrounded him in a tight circle, glowering at him in complete silence.

  Strangely, he couldn’t care less about their peculiar behavior. He turned toward the cylinders and raised his hands, but instead of the familiar orange or white glow of his magic, his entire body emitted a deep purple light. It wasn’t his magical energy signature. It was dark and evil, but for some reason that didn’t bother him either.