I stand, slowly, and creep around the table towards the vamps, holding Ferignis out in front of me. I clench the sword as tightly as I can, pain throbbing up and down my arm now that my pendant is gone. Blood drips to the ground, forming a path of little red dots and rivulets behind me.
“What is that?” the guy vamp asks.
“It’s called Ferignis,” I say. “Its touch can burn the flesh off a vamp and send them straight to hell.” I step closer, as confidently as I can. The vamps backtrack towards each other until they stand shoulder to shoulder.
While I have their attention, Wes slinks up behind them and presses his gun to the girl’s temple. She flinches away from the metal, grabbing Wes by the arm only to release him with a yelp a moment later when he sets himself on fire again.
“I suggest you get out of here,” I say, swiveling the aim of the sword between her chest and the boy’s. “Follow your friend, and go find a snack that’s not in possession of vamp-killing weaponry.”
The vamps turn to each other doubtfully. The girl nods, clutching Cass’s pendant to her chest, and the two of them vanish in a rush of wind, too fast for my eyes to follow.
Wes tucks away his gun, and I lower Ferignis onto the table behind me. “That bloodsucker took my pendant,” I breathe. I retrace the vamps’ steps to the open cabin door, searching the floor in case she dropped it in her hurry to get away. Nope.
“How did you get out of the form chain?” Wes demands. “How did you shift?”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You really think that chain had some special magic that kept me from shifting?”
“Yes,” Wes says, “because you couldn’t shift before.” He comes up to stand right behind me and crosses his arms. “Or were you just pretending?”
“Well, I was,” I admit, “but only because I knew there was no way your Warden friends would let me stay in their bunker if they knew I could fly away whenever I wanted to. Which I didn’t do, by the way.” I try to step outside, but Wes swings in front of the doorway and blocks me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he growls, holding me back and closing the door. “Like hell I’m letting you run off into the woods by yourself.”
“I have to find my pendant,” I say, struggling against him. I could shift—I have no reason to pretend I can’t now—but I don’t want to freak him out even more.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says. “After all that, you’re worried about your necklace?”
“It’s not just a necklace,” I snap, grunting as I try to shove him aside. “It’s an ice-glass necklace, you idiot.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Damn it.
“It’s what?” Wes pushes me away from the door forcefully, taking his aura detector from his belt. “Is that why this went off when the vamp ripped it off you?” He shoves a finger at the little gray dot in the detector’s center, meant to represent me. “The ice-glass was hiding your aura or something?”
“I didn’t know it could do that,” I say quickly. I hadn’t, at least until a couple weeks ago when Evana told me. And now I’ve unintentionally handed Wes a super helpful nugget of confidential Nixan information. Oops.
“Well, you knew it was ice-glass,” Wes growls. “You didn’t think that was worth mentioning before?”
“It was just a gift, all right? From a friend.” I run my fingers along the skin beneath my collarbone where the pendant had been; I hadn’t taken it off in over two years. “It’s not like I could actually channel Old Magic with it or anything. I’m not a priest.”
Wes slams shut the cabin door, trapping me inside. “Well, it’s gone for good now. There’s no way the vamp just dropped it; people with perfect coordination don’t drop things.”
He’s right, unfortunately. Cass’s pendant, the whole reason I got sent here in the first place, is gone for good.
Gritting my teeth with frustration, I slump back against the wall and clutch at my still-throbbing arm. I watch Wes out of the sides of my eyes as he fiddles with the aura detector. “I should have this set to pick up all Novan auras,” he mutters. “Apparently our allies aren’t very good at being allies.” He puts the detector on everybody mode; there’s another shrill beep, and two red dots pop up beside mine, the orange dots of the vamps already outside the detector’s range. “Looks like Baz is back, at least.”
Sure enough, Basil stumbles into the cabin a minute later, carrying four grocery bags worth of food. He takes in the scene—the bullet hole in the window, the soot and blood stains on the floor, the shifter-less chain cuffed to a table leg.
“Okay,” he says; “what exactly did I miss?”
Seventeen Months Ago: Keira
I leaned over the café counter, my arms still sore from my last supply patrol. “I’ll have three strawberry smoothies, please.”
The barista at the register punched in my order. “That’ll be eleven twenty-five.”
“I’m paying,” I said through the mind-link.
Salene narrowed her eyes at me. “No, you’re not.”
“I wanted strawberry banana, actually,” Arion said.
I turned to look at him, reclining back in his seat with his eyes shut. I’d thought he was asleep.
“Actually, can you change one of those to strawberry banana?” I asked. The barista sighed as she put in the new order, nodding.
I paid for the smoothies despite Salene’s protests, and when they were ready I grabbed some straws and helped her carry them back to our table.
Salene kicked Arion in the shin. “Wake up, you lazy ass. Keira just bought you a smoothie.”
“Thanks, Keira,” he yawned, sitting up. “I’ll buy you something the next time we’re here.”
Here was Marley’s, a Sen café that had also happened to be a bona fide Sentry hangout. It was nestled in a small Sen town only a short flight away from New Fauske, and it had great coffee and smoothies. Plus, the Marley’s baristas and regular patrons knew not to ask about the weird eyes and strange conversations.
“If you’re feeling charitable, I’d rather you just pay me back,” I tell Arion. “I’m trying to save up to buy one of those battery charger phone case things.”
“Be quiet,” Salene muttered, taking a sip of her smoothie. “There are Sentries all around us. Some of them might be Caph’s friends.”
I snorted. “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me Caphian doesn’t have a secret Solas phone stashed away somewhere.”
“He does,” Arion confirmed. “I used to play him on Fruit Ninja.”
“Still,” Salene said. “We have the mind-link for a reason.”
She’d hardly finished speaking when the voice of Caphian himself echoed through the mind-link: “Meet at the top of the west tower in thirty minutes.”
All three of us froze with our smoothie straws hanging from our mouths. “Did you guys get that,” Salene said, “or was that just me?”
“Nope. We’re all lucky winners.” Arion checked his watch. “It’s barely nine in the morning. And I was up till midnight in a watchtower.”
“At least you weren’t on patrol,” I said. “I had to fly back from Seattle yesterday.” Most of the Sentries on my patrol got to ride back on the supply train, but I was one of the unfortunate few chosen to guard the train from above.
“Well,” Salene sighed, “we’d better get going. Don’t want to keep him waiting.”
The three of us tossed our barely-touched smoothies in the trash, and as soon as we were far enough into the woods to be away from Sen eyes, we took off for New Fauske.
Sentries could never play normal for very long.
❄❄
There were one hundred and eighty Sentries called by Caphian to the west tower. The tower wasn’t meant to hold so many people, so most of the latecomers ended up perched on its parapets in positions that would be precarious for anyone who couldn’t change into a bird at a moment’s notice. Caphian stood in the center beside Asreil and Thea, his two top underlings, with a big map of Sector One pr
opped up next to him. Behind the map were large crates of guns and patrol belts.
Well, this looked interesting. “An emergency patrol?” Arion asked me and Salene. I shrugged. None of us had ever been on an emergency patrol before.
“Last night,” Caphian began, “one of our supply patrols reported some discontent in a Shade camp called Fersa.” He pointed it out on the map: a little dot in southeastern British Columbia. “When the patrol came to collect their monthly quota of goods, they were chased off by the Shades and given nothing from the month of production. One Sentry was badly injured, and the two Nixan missionaries stationed in the camp had to flee for their safety.”
“Pricks,” someone random thought into the mind-link, heard by everyone assembled. Caph looked around for them, but no one came forward. It was hard to tell who was who in the mind-link when there was a crowd.
“Anyway,” Caph continued, clearing his throat, “you have all been chosen for the emergency patrol I’ll be taking to put down their revolt. For many of you, this will be your first time in real combat. Most of our more experienced Sentries were participants in our assault on Alexandria last week, and I’m allowing them all to take a break from battle to recover.” He’d been injured himself, I realized—his left arm was covered in burn marks that clearly hadn’t been looked at by a healer yet. I wondered what lucky Warden had managed to get a shot at him. “Fortunately, we should be able to take care of these Shades without their help.”
“Shades hate the sun,” Thea reminded us unnecessarily. “They’re at their best in the dark—they’ll blind you, and use the darkness to sap your strength. Their camp is in the middle of a thick forest without much sun, but there’s an open hill face just to the west of it. We are going to flush the Shades out of their camp and force them out into the open.”
Caphian nodded. “We’ll attack in three groups of sixty, led by myself, Asreil, and Thea.” He turned to his map again, tracing a finger along the three paths he’d drawn in between Fersa and New Fauske. “Asreil’s group will attack from the north, and Thea’s will come in from the south. My patrol will circle around the camp to stake out in the woods past the hill. It’s about a three-hour flight from here; we’ll coordinate so that all the groups will arrive at about the same time.”
“We’re going now?” someone asked, aloud this time.
“Yes,” Asreil said. “We’ll reach Fersa around one, which is the best time to fight Shades. Shadows are shortest, and the sun is at its strongest.”
“We’re all flying there, but we have medical copters stationed nearby for the injured to get home,” Caphian added. He glanced around the tower one more time. “If there aren’t any questions, I’ll divide you now into your groups.”
Salene and I were put with Caphian, while Arion was grouped with Thea. Caph led his group over to one side of the tower, dragging one of the crates behind him. Inside it were simple handguns; I’d rather have had an assault rifle or something, but a handgun was about the biggest weapon that a shifter was capable of shifting with.
Caph had volunteers pass out belts and guns to everyone in his group while he consulted his notepad. “All right; we’ve got a good flight ahead of us. A good fight, too.”
“I’ve been to Fersa before on patrol,” Salene told me. “It’s one of the biggest Shade camps in the sector.”
I sighed. “Great.”
“Keira,” Caphian called. My head snapped up. “Asreil said you flew well on his last patrol with you. You’ll front our formation first. Salene, you can front second.”
Salene and I exchanged excited glances. “I wasn’t even sure he knew our names,” I thought to her. She grinned.
“We’re leaving first,” Caph said. “Let’s go kick some ass.” The Sentries on the parapets flung themselves over the side of the tower, changing into falcons and hawks and eagles as they fell; I joined the birds with Salene as a red kite, working my way quickly up to the front of the pack, and together we flew off for Fersa.
❄❄
Three hours later, our patrol descended into the woods west of Fersa, ready for a fight. “I’m tired,” Salene complained as she landed in falcon form beside me on the branch of a cedar tree. “Fronting is hard.” Though kites aren’t the biggest or fastest of raptors, I wasn’t tired myself; all I could feel was a red-hot spot of heat on my chest where Cass’s pendant should be.
“We’ll wait for them to come to us,” Caphian said to the patrol from a branch above our heads. “Just hold tight for a few minutes.”
It wasn’t long before we saw Asreil and Thea’s patrols diving into the woods over the hill, coming in from opposite directions as planned. Seconds after their descent, the bang-bang and whistle of gunshots reached our ears. I tensed; I couldn’t see anything through the thick trees, and even with a kite’s hearing, there was no way of telling if the gunshots were coming from Sentries or Shades.
“I thought Shades slept during the day,” Salene said to me.
“Not if they’re expecting us to attack, they don’t.”
Salene shivered. “I hope Arion’s okay.”
“He’ll be fine,” I assured her. “He’s not stupid enough to get himself killed in his first fight.” Hopefully.
It was about five minutes of shooting and slashing and yells and screams before Shades began pouring out of the woods ahead, running downhill straight at us while simultaneously attempting to shield themselves from the sun. “Now!” Caphian called. Salene and I spread our wings and dove off our branch, pumping quickly to gain altitude until we flew just below Caphian. The rest of the patrol rose from the trees as well, their wing beats following us like rolls of thunder. Some extra-ambitious Sentries overtook Caphian to fly at the head of the flock.
“Watch your shadows!” Caphian warned. The Shades closest to our patrol had swapped their guns for knives; one Shade stabbed his knife into the breast of a Sentry’s shadow painted on the hillside, and one of the birds ahead of us shrieked and fell to the ground like a rock. After him, a few more Sentry shadows were stabbed and slashed, and a few more Sentries plummeted to their deaths. Not me and Salene, though—we stuck right behind Caph, our shadows deftly skirting all the Shades with knives.
“Dive!” Caphian yelled as we neared the center of the Shade mob. We tucked in our wings and swooped down, the wind whistling over our backs, shifting when we were a few feet above head level. I landed on a Shade woman as a snow leopard, and snapped her back simply with the force of the impact. I dealt a quick blow to her neck and landed on my feet, shifting back to a human and whipping out my gun to fire freely at the blue-and-purple-haired heads in the crowd. Caphian did the same just ahead of me, and Salene beside me.
In the thick of the crowd, we didn’t have to worry as much about the Shades attacking our shadows; they could just as easily slice through the head of one of their own as one of ours. We did, however, have to worry about knives and bullets flashing past us at the speed of light—even with the ability to shift in the blink of an eye, I quickly found myself going on the defensive, worried more about preserving my own life than taking others’.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Shade charging at Caphian with his knife extended, ready to stab him through the neck while his back was turned to him. “Watch out!” I yelled to Caph, lunging forward and intercepting the knife blow with the barrel of my handgun. The gun and knife clanked together just above the nape of Caphian’s neck; the Shade pulled out another knife and slashed the blade down the side of my leg. I cried out in pain, but kept my bearings long enough to shoot the man in the foot. His legs buckled underneath him, and Caph turned and fired two bullets into his chest.
“You saved my life,” Caph breathed, turning to find my eyes. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” A knife blade arced towards my head; I ducked and shifted back into kite form to get above the fray.
“Is your leg hurt?” Caph asked me from below as he changed into a wolf and clamped his jaws around a woman’s arm.
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t actually—my leg was bleeding even as a bird—but I couldn’t feel the pain at all thanks to Cass’s pendant.
“Good. Go to the copters if it gets worse.” Caphian lunged for his Shade woman’s throat, putting an end to her screams.
I flew higher, angling my wings to circle the fight and find another place to dive in. It was much safer up here—I didn’t have to worry anymore about being shadow-stabbed out of the sky, and aside from a few bullets whizzing by, all the Shades’ attention was focused on the Sentries on the ground.
Asreil in eagle form flew by me, leading a small group back towards the woods. “Some Shades are retreating to their camp,” he said to me, “to recover their strength in the darkness and launch another attack. We need to drive them back into the open again, and leave the bodies of the ones we can’t.”
“All right,” I said, following Asreil’s group towards the camp before adjusting to enter the woods twenty degrees to the left of them. I dove down to tree level and flew a little ways in, dodging branches and tree trunks and dumbstruck squirrels. I heard a sharp gasp of pain from somewhere nearby; I located the source easily, and landed neatly on the ground beside a young Shade girl huddled beneath a tree, clutching at her leg in pain and hoping the shadows around her would heal her.
I got to my feet and pulled out my gun, stepping closer until I stood directly above the Shade with my gun pointed straight at her head. It took her a minute to realize I was there—when she did, her eyes locked first on the gun in my hand, then shot up to my face. They were dark eyes, bloodshot and brightened by pain, sunken into a face framed by tousled indigo hair. The leg that she held to her chest was covered in scores of bite marks from some vicious animal. My leg would probably be killing me like that, too, if not for the pendant.
“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered.
The gun trembled in my hand. Great Nixa. The ten seconds I’d spent studying the girl were too much; I’d made her too human. It’s easy to kill faceless people in a crowd, especially when you can’t tell exactly who you’re shooting at—but killing injured, unarmed little girls at point-blank range was something else. I still had nightmares about killing Soraia, and Soraia at least had been trying to kill me back.
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