by Rain Oxford
“Is that why weird things have been happening?”
“Most of it is because the shadow walkers who were assigned to watch you and find your weaknesses are being hindered by the soul guards. The Shadow Master is powerful, but he’s a coward; he’s not going to face you until he knows he can beat you.”
“How am I supposed to help the soul guards? I can’t have that many visions all the time.”
“All of the shadow walkers are connected psychically through the Shadow Master. I can show you every person they’re going after and when. If you can get some other wizards on it, you should be able to at least slow them down. The problem is you’re human; you can’t handle that much information in your head at once. Your brain can’t process it.”
I sighed. “I know someone who can.”
“No, there’s only one way I can show you.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I have to be in your head. I would have to possess you.”
“No way in Hell. I do the entering people’s minds, not the other way around.” She laughed. “Yes, I know how that sounded, and I’m not taking it back.”
“I would tell you to just take one for the team here, but I know it wouldn’t do any good anyway.”
Actually, she had a point. I did way more dangerous things on a daily basis for less, and if she was telling the truth, then there were more Dothra wizards on my side than against me. If I knew ahead of time when the shadow walkers were going to show up, I could set a trap. “If you possessed me and used my magic to connect with Darwin, would he be in any danger?”
“Darwin?”
“He’s got a mind like a supercomputer. If he ever went evil, he would make the Shadow Master look like a fluffy kitten. In fact, I know that from experience. His mental processing skills are supernatural.”
She looked doubtful. “It wouldn’t hurt him, but I doubt he’s that good. I will only be able to stay inside you for a few seconds, since I’m not a soul guard or a shadow walker anymore.”
“You can try to make it a little less disturbing.”
“Not really. I aim to make it as uncomfortable as possible for you. We may be on the same side, and I need your help, but you killed Gale.”
“What do you care? You’re a demon.”
“He was mine!” she screeched. The door burst open and Henry slammed her to the ground with one of his shifter-enhanced martial arts moves. He held her pinned on her stomach with her right arm twisted upward so that he could easily break it if she didn’t submit. “I wasn’t doing anything!”
Henry growled and pressed down on her shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked me.
“Yeah, she didn’t do anything.”
“Call off your dog!” Felicity demanded.
“You shouldn’t be making demands in your position. Henry, let her up.” He did and she climbed to her feet slowly. “I’ll see if Darwin is willing.”
“Willing to do what?” Darwin asked from the doorway. Scott was trying to see around him. Darwin pushed Scott into Henry’s room and shut the door before returning a few seconds later.
“You’ll do it then?” Felicity asked me.
“You said Darwin and I won’t be endangered. To save the victims of the shadow walkers, I will put up with the discomfort of having you in me for a few seconds.”
“What?!” Henry asked.
“Trust me; those seconds are going to feel like hours,” Felicity said.
I sighed and turned to Darwin. “Remember when you poured information from yourself, through me, and into John’s mind?”
“Yeah.”
“I need to do the reverse. Felicity thinks she can find out everyone the shadow walkers are after to kill or convert, but she can only do it for a few seconds, so the onslaught of information is going to be too quick for a normal person to handle.”
“No problem. It’ll be a little awkward without my personal computers, but I pretty much fixed your laptop.”
“It wasn’t broken.”
He scoffed. “It so was. Is it just going to be a list of names?”
Felicity shook her head. “Krechea has a psychic link with his followers not much different than yours with people. His command is to build his army and kill his enemies. The shadow walkers sniff out the most powerful people and keep a constant update through the psychic link. That means if one of them is almost done persuading a child to give his magic to the Shadow Master and gets killed, another can take over exactly where he left off.”
“So even if we get the list, it won’t be current for long.”
“No, but you can still save hundreds of people. It will also tell you who they’re going to kill and who they’re going to try to coerce. They can sense who is not persuadable. What he will get when I tap into the stream is all of the victims, when and where they’re going to strike, and how. The children take the longest because they have to be approached strategically.”
“Okay. Let’s do this,” Darwin said.
“You realize that’s ridiculous, right?” Henry asked. “You have no idea what Felicity might do if you let her take control of you.”
“That’s where you come in.” I opened the drawer and pulled out a potion bottle. “This will expel any demon from my body. You’re going to tie me up and stay close with the potion. If Darwin agrees to it, I’m going to use my magic to connect to his mind. Felicity will possess me and use my magic to transfer the information to Darwin. Felicity says it will only be a few seconds. At thirty seconds, if she doesn’t let me go, use the potion.”
“And neither of you will be hurt?”
“Anyone who can process that much information in a few seconds is in constant pain anyway,” Felicity said.
“Are you sure about this? She could learn all your weaknesses and strengths. If this is a trap and she is helping the shadow walkers, this would be a huge advantage to them.”
“I know.” The thing was, I had seen into Felicity’s mind, and I didn’t think she was. There was a part of her that really cared about Gale, and that part wanted to destroy Krechea more than anything. “We’re not going to beat the shadow walkers if we don’t get ahead of them, and that means taking a risk.”
“Can Rocky help?”
“His magic is tethered to my life; I doubt I could stop him if he thought I was in trouble.” Or she. I didn’t really want to think of gargoyles as having genders. “Alright. I assume you know how to tie a person up,” I said to Henry as I went to my closet and pulled a roll of rope out of a tackle box.
“I haven’t tied anyone up before, but I think I can handle it.” He frowned as he took it. “I would expect Darwin to keep rope in his closet, not you.”
“I don’t have rope,” Darwin insisted. “Silk ties are so much better.”
“You are corrupting Amelia, aren’t you?”
He just laughed and muttered something I couldn’t make out. “Go ahead and do your thing. I’m going to take your laptop into Henry’s room, kick the kid out, and get ready. Once the data transfer gets started, don’t interrupt me and don’t use any magic that can make the computer die.”
He walked out and I used my magic to open a link to his mind. His wolf was there as well, but it was being quiet for the time being. I sat down on my bed and Henry started tying me up. “Ready?”
“Yep.”
“You are going to want to close your eyes for this,” Felicity said.
“Not a fucking chance.”
“The more you fight me, the longer it’s going to take, and the worse it’s going to feel for both of us. With the Shadow Master’s power, the process is easy for any shadow walker. I don’t have that much power anymore, so it’ll feel like you’re suffocating.”
“Fantastic.”
“Is that tight enough?” Henry asked.
I tried to tug my arms loose, but the rope held. “Yes, that’s good. What now?”
“Close your eyes,” Felicity insisted.
I did, knowing Henry was rea
dy for anything. I wasn’t expecting to be kissed, though. It wasn’t even the first time she kissed me. It was, however, a lot more unpleasant than the first time, because as soon as her lips touched mine, I felt hot smoke invading my lungs.
I wasn’t a smoker, but I had been in a smoke-filled burning house before, and it felt a lot like that. The smoke filled my lungs first and spread slowly throughout my body. When it got to my head, bright white light flooded my vision.
* * *
When the blinding light finally faded, I opened my eyes. I felt cooked. My eyes were dry and itchy, while everything else just hurt. I opened my mouth to speak and ended up coughing. After a moment, Henry put a glass of water in my hand. The cold water in my throat helped. “How long?” I asked, my voice raspy. It felt like hours.
“Twelve seconds. Felicity turned into something like black smoke. When she was expelled from you, she reformed and then just passed out.”
I looked down to see Felicity on the ground. “You just left her on the floor?” I set the water aside, stood up with difficulty, picked up Felicity, and laid her on the bed.
“I was more worried about you being alive.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Darwin emerged from Henry’s room with my laptop. Scott was sitting on the floor, I was on the couch, Felicity slept in my bed, and Henry was in the kitchen, making lunch. My body was still sore, but I wasn’t in serious pain.
Darwin sat down. “I password protected the lists because I didn’t know who you wanted them sent to.” His voice was a little flat.
“Are you okay? Was it painful?”
“No. It was fun. I’m just mopey because we have a shitload of work ahead of us. Your password is d-r-2-3-o-l-m-h-j.” He showed me three documents on my screen: Children, Immediate Targets, and Non-immediate Targets.
I opened one of the documents and scrolled through. “There’re hundreds of names here. How many shadow walkers are there?”
“It looks like seven.”
“Seven?! We’re so worried about seven?!”
“Each of them is easily ten times as powerful as our best wizards. That’s seven plus four more that are focused on getting information on you and Hunt.”
“If we can get ahead of them on the immediate targets list, we might be able to take them out.”
“Did you miss the part where I said how powerful they are?”
“Yes, you’re right; we should leave them alone to pick off our allies and build an army.”
* * *
I appeared out of the darkness in Hunt’s private library attached to his office. When I stepped out, Hunt, Flagstone, and Remington were staring at me. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” I wasn’t surprised, though. It seemed like any time the three were in the same room anymore, they were fighting.
“I was just leaving anyway,” Remington said, shooting her father a glare before turning and exiting the office.
Flagstone looked like he was doing everything he could not to go after her. Hunt made a motion with his hands and the door slammed shut, effectively warning Flagstone not to try it. “So, anyway, I know who the shadow walkers are going to go after.”
The plan was pretty simple. Hunt and Flagstone would go save all the children, because they were both great with them and they knew how to use the shadow pass much better than me. Since the council was still in turmoil, Vincent, Maseré, Sean Bell, and Stephen would take care of it. Henry, Darwin, Rocky, and I would go after the remaining victims.
“Have the wards around the school been reinforced?”
“It is almost ready. I would give it two more days to be infallible, but if someone needs the protection of the university, it will hold up better than nothing.”
“That might have to be enough.”
Chapter 8
I woke on the floor in the middle of the night to find Felicity had left. I was a little worried about her health, but I was also glad to have my soft bed back. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to get to enjoy it for long.
“Devon, it’s time for your three-o’clock appointment,” Darwin said through the door.
I cussed something at him, which he took as an invitation. The only reason I didn’t throw a fireball or something at him was because he had coffee, and I didn’t want him to spill it. I sat up and he handed the oversized mug to me. “What is it?” I asked.
“There’s a wizard in Oregon who is about to get killed by a shadow walker.”
“That’s all the info I have to go on?”
“It’s three in the fucking morning,” he yawned.
“I need more than that to find him.”
He rolled his eyes and pushed a link open to my mind. I saw a picture of a man, staring out the window of an office building in the middle of the day. I pushed Darwin out of my mind, chugged down my coffee, and focused on the symbol of my door. The sting in my palm was less conspicuous each time I entered the shadow pass.
I stood as the darkness swarmed around me and blocked out my room. With the image in my mind, my instincts led me a few steps before the darkness fled and I was left in what was definitely the most occult room I had ever seen. Aside from the fact that the room was round, there were sigils, circles, and stars etched into every inch of wooden floor. In the middle of the room was an altar with a single book and two fat, worn-down candles. The only light was from the two candles on the altar, but seconds later, a large circle of candles surrounding the altar lit themselves.
And then, suddenly, there was a presence behind me. I turned, expecting to see a shadow walker. The man was my height with dark brown, shaggy hair and light brown eyes. He wore a black satin shirt, black leather pants, black boots, and a metal chain around his waist like a belt. Around his neck was a thick black leather collar.
Although my instincts told me he wasn’t a shadow walker, they also told me I was facing one of the most powerful people I had ever met. At the same time, I wasn’t sensing a lot of magic from him. My instincts told me he was up there on Langril’s level, yet he didn’t seem to be any more powerful than Hunt.
“What are you?” I asked, honestly thrown for a loop.
He smirked. “You’re the one intruding on my home.”
“I’m here because someone is coming to attack you and he or she is very dangerous.”
“So you’ve come to warn me? Good Samaritans are so rare these days.”
“Well, actually, I came to protect you, but that doesn’t seem to be necessary. Are you ridiculously powerful, or do you have something ridiculously powerful on you? I can’t tell.”
He laughed this time, pulled a cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and sucked. The tip lit itself. He finally pulled it away and blew smoke out. “Yeah, I’m really fucking powerful. And really fucking sealed.”
“What?”
“What part of that confused you?”
“The sealed part.”
“You came here to protect me from a shadow walker and you don’t even know the basics of magic seals?” he laughed and waved his hand at himself in gesture. “No matter how powerful you are, there is someone out there bigger and badder. I managed to piss off that one person who could kick my ass and that’s exactly what he did. He sealed my magic so I’ll serve him.”
“That is horrible.”
He shrugged. “I tried to kill his son, so I probably deserved it. I’ll be free of his magic soon enough. Right now, I can only do as much as a lowly wizard… like you, right? You’re a wizard?”
“I can see why you pissed the guy off. Do you or do you not need help?”
“I’m immortal. A fight will be fun. Besides, no one who steps foot in here can defeat me.” He pointed to the symbols on the floor. “This stops anyone from using magic against me, and it uses the person’s power against them, so the stronger they are, the more effective it is. You can stick around to watch if you want.”
“Shouldn’t the man who sealed you protect you?”
“He left a few months ago and I’m
left to my own devices until he or his kids need me.”
“If you seriously don’t need me, I’m going home and going back to bed. Now, the person who comes here might try to convince you to join his master’s army to---”
“I only obey one master,” he said, his voice changing completely. Everything about his eyes, posture, and voice told me he was absolutely devoted to whoever had sealed him. It was unexpected to say the least.
“In that case, I’ll be off. Good luck.”
“And you, with your hero thing.”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
“It’s subjective whether you’re the villain or hero. No matter what you are, when you have power, you’re someone’s hero and someone else’s worst nightmare. I’m Zeb, by the way.”
“I’m Devon.” I returned to the shadow pass. Whether he was overconfident or not, I didn’t feel like I needed to step in. When the shadows left me in my bedroom, Darwin was asleep in my bed. I poked him in the chest and he woke with a jerk.
“What? Who? Where are we?” He tried to wipe sleep from his eyes, only to wince from all the cuts and bruises on his hands. He had explained that he hadn’t completely recovered his energy, so his healing was going to be very slow for a few days.
“Go back to the couch.”
“No, you got another one at…” he checked his watch. “Three-thirty.”
“Send Rocky.” The gargoyle appeared right beside me, obviously having been eavesdropping. I wasn’t surprised, since his life was tied to mine. I opened the mental link between me and Darwin and he visualized a young teenaged girl, sitting outside in the sun by the lake. Rocky vanished a second later. “Done. Now go get on the couch. I’m exhausted.” Darwin nodded, not getting off my bed and instead snuggling into my blankets. “Darwin!”
“Sorry,” he said, doing an amazing impression of a drunken sloth for the entire five minutes it took him to get up. He would have been faster if he was sleepwalking.
* * *
I was awoken again by Scott crawling under my covers. “What are you doing, Kitten?” I asked, my voice barely more than a murmur.