City of Shadows

by Pippa Dacosta

Fear snapped him upright and wiped the smile off his face.

  “You wanted reinforcements. Well, you’ve got them. Only, I don’t think they’re pleased the boy they failed to kill all those years ago has dared open a path back home. Do you?”

  Samuel’s gaze skittered about the crowd, now standing well back from us and watching—waiting.

  I turned my dagger in my right hand, clasping it by the blade instead of the handle. “Close the path, Samuel. Do it now before all of Faerie comes through and brings their war with them.”

  His wide eyes settled on me. “They know. It won’t end here. This is the beginning.”

  The path rippled—open and inviting. The creatures had stopped pouring forth. Some, driven by fear of the hound, passed through from this side to Faerie. But while it was open, the worst was yet to come. I knew it, felt it coming, like an approaching storm. The path had to be closed or Faerie would swallow London. “You’ve proven your point, but you don’t need approval from the elders, Samuel. You don’t need them. You’re an elder, right? Do the noble thing. Make peace here. Close the path.”

  “What do you know of the old ways, Construct? You cannot possibly understand. I will bring them here, show them what we have, and they’ll accept me among them. They’ll have to. It is my birthright, my bloodline!”

  I almost pitied him. The ache of loneliness was something we both shared. “You already had a family, Samuel. Before all this. Kael, Nyx, Scaw, the FA. They respected you.”

  “It’s not enough,” he snarled. “London will never be enough. Faerie is where we belong. I will not be left to rot here. I am meant for more.” He turned to the crowd. “We are all meant for more than this gray place. This is not our world, our city. These people are nothing to us, nothing but food. And now they seek to control us, to shove us into the dark, hide us away.” Murmurs rippled through the hundreds. “We will not be controlled.” His voice sailed across the square. “Not anymore. Not by people, and not …” His amethyst eyes found me. “And not by you.”

  A ripple passed through the air and stirred the crowd. I flicked a glance at the path, feeling something tug on my thoughts. Welcome home, it promised. Come back. Samuel lifted his head. His attention slipped from me, toward the path. Come home. Be where you belong. Over and over the whispers filtered through the madness and pulled. Cut grass and wet leaves, fresh, clean, and alive. I could smell home, not mine, but Arachne’s. And it was that part of me that moved toward the pathway. Others had already come forward and were stepping into the light, answering the sweet voice. Come home, Faerie called.

  A snarl rippled through the quiet. The hound came through the parting fae, head bowed. It padded slowly, dragging its heavy paws, scraping its claws along the ground. As it strode by me, prickles of fear dashed against the sweet promises in my mind, plucking apart the compulsion.

  Shay caught my hand and yanked me backward until we both fell against a fountain. “Stop him.” Splatters of blood dashed her pale face. “You must stop him. He can’t go back. He can’t.”

  Fear. I could taste it in the air, feel it tight against my skin. Mine, the hound’s, Shay’s. They were all so terribly afraid.

  “It’s a compulsion, Alina. Please, he can’t help himself. The harpy, she calls to us all. We’ll go, and we’ll die. Stop Reign, you must. Stop Cu Sith. He must not be allowed to join with the harpy.”

  “The harpy … ?” The terror that filled the skies and blotted out the sun, the moon, the day and night. The last of the Three. The last ruler of Faerie. I knew her, Arachne feared her. She was the true Nightmare, and now she called to her subjects.

  Shay’s open-palmed slap rocked me sideways and nearly knocked me clean off my feet. “Get him back. Now! I did not come here, to this horrible world, to live without him!” She spat the words out and slumped over the fountain’s edge, her shoulders heaving.

  The entire side of my face burned, but the pain grounded me back where I belonged. A reality where the London fae were walking toward what would surely be their deaths. The hound included.

  I could hear her. The harpy. So filled with sweet promises. Come back. Come home, she called. But Faerie wasn’t my home. It never had been. I was Alina O’Connor, born in London; the trainee reporter who asked all the questions. I dug down inside my own mind and gripped all that it meant to be me, dragging my control back to the surface and clearing my head of the toxic whispers. “You can’t have the hound.” I reached out a hand and with it pulled along the tether of life connecting the hound to me. “Find Samuel,” I called back to Shay, keeping my eyes on the hulking mass of hound as it paused by the pathway’s entrance.

  I closed my outstretched hand into a fist and willed the hound back but the stubborn beast wouldn’t move.

  Come home, come back to us.

  That sweet voice was a mask, a deception. Behind it, terror waited, her talons like scythes.

  “Alina, please … quickly.” Shay’s words distracted me, plucking at my focus. “Don’t let him go. Bring him back to me.”

  It wasn’t working. My link wasn’t yet strong enough. “Reign, goddamn it.” I broke into a run, feeling the sweet promises spill over me with every step. The closer to the pathway, the stronger her compulsion became, until it pulled at my body like invisible hands. But the hound had stopped at the threshold. It waited for something or someone. I shoved through the mesmerized fae, skidded in front of Cu Sith, and spread my arms wide.

  “Hey!” Up close, draíocht peeled off its thick fur in flickering tendrils. Its jaws could easily close around my head and break my neck. I gulped hard and stood my ground. “Reign, you stubborn son of a bitch, I know you’re in there. You told me to bring you back. So here I am. Answer me, damn you.”

  So close, step through, sister … We could rule again. All Three. Three as it was meant to be.

  Lies, it was lies. Her promises couldn’t mask the sense of terror choking the air.

  The hound lowered its head and speared me with a gaze laden with threat. It raised its upper lip in a rumbling snarl.

  “You know me …” I tried not to let my tone waver but doubt unsettled it all the same. I could do this. I could control him. I had to. “Reign.”

  The hound’s growl bubbled up from inside its bulk. The hound won’t suffer a weak little construct pulling on its reins. The fear in Reign’s eyes, maybe it hadn’t been for him. Maybe it had been for me. Cu Sith’s red eyes blazed. There was no sign of that fear now, and nothing of Reign bled through that glare. Whatever power the hound recognized in me before, it didn’t see it in me now.

  “Reign!” Shay’s cry shattered the quiet.

  Go, Shay I thought. Get away. Go, just go! He can’t hear you. It’s me he hears, here and now. I’m all he knows. Not you, Shay. Never you.

  The hound whipped its head around. Tension coiled in its muscles, cinching them quivering tight, and then it charged. Not for me, not for the fae, or the pathway—but for Shay.

  “No!” I bolted forward. Shay froze atop the National Gallery steps. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. “Run!” I yelled, but she didn’t move. Palming a dagger, I poured everything I had into my sprint. Breath rasping across my lips, legs pumping, but I wasn’t going to reach her. I let the dagger fly. It sliced across the hound’s hide but the beast didn’t slow. On thundering paws, it closed the distance.

  “Shay, run!”

  Her eyes glittered, her face frozen in terror. She forgot her short sword, even as she lifted a single hand, as though she could hold back a force of nature.

  The hound leaped.

  My unreal heart stuttered.

  The hound tore into her, every bite sharp, every tear vicious. I didn’t want to see the blood soaking her white dress, how her head lolled to one side and her glassy eyes seemed to focus on me while the hound ripped into her with tooth and claw.

  Come back to me …The promises still poured forth but they fell on my deaf ears.

  An arm hooked around my waist and dragged me backwa
rd. A voice I recognized yelled for me to control him, to stop him, before Reign turned on us all.

  “It’s not Reign,” I mumbled. Did I do this? I’d wanted her gone. I’d wanted her out of the way. Did my intent turn the hound on Shay?

  Nyx clasped my face with her hands. “He won’t stop at her. Own him, Alina.”

  Nothing owned the hound.

  “Consider this a warning, little construct.” This voice, this was old and new to my mind. It dragged like razor blades through my head, and when I turned to find its source, a vast winged figure filled the pathway entrance. My first human thought was angel, but she was no angel. Dark peeled off her feather tips and pooled around her taloned feet. Claws tipped her hands where her fingers should be, and her face was a contorted combination of unnaturally sharp cheekbones and jutting chin. Hideous, and yet when she lifted her hand, I lifted mine. I wanted to go with her. The fae around me drifted forward.

  “You are worthy to contain my sister, and perhaps for that I should be grateful,” she said, sweeping her black-eyed gaze about the square; searching. Her glare returned to me, and the quick slash of a smile revealed vicious needle teeth. “The elder will be found. Have the hound, if you must. Should you weave a path once more, I will come, and I will take. I will own. You do not control my subjects, I do. All of Faerie and her children belong to me. A construct built of Arachne’s whim and the undisciplined Cu Sith?” She laughed, and it sounded like breaking glass. “You are no threat to me. Wilt and rot here, as you were destined to.” She stepped back, and the glittering flow of draíocht collapsed in a thrilled rush of energy that surged over those remaining in the square, simultaneously flooding us with life, and ripping it away in the next breath.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The open pathway had gone, as had the flood of draíocht, and the majority of the fae. Those that remained lay startled and forlorn. Distant sirens sounded. A plane rumbled overhead. London. As it should be. Sounding dull and blunt to my ears in the absence of draíocht, but full of life all the same.

  Kael strode through the fallen. Fierce determination had shut down his expression. He’d gained a bloodied lip and a slight limp, but neither bothered him. For a few moments I wondered if he might be about to plunge his daggers into me. I braced against the ground. He snarled, snatched my elbow, and yanked me to my feet. In my post-draíocht swamped state, I wobbled and considered taking a swing at him for the rough handling, when he turned me around and shoved me toward the Gallery steps.

  Blood had crawled its way over the lip of the top step.

  “You failed to control the hound,” Kael snarled, his voice riddled with disgust.

  Reign sat beside Shay’s mangled body, confusion cutting deep into his pale face. He lifted his hand and turned it over, admiring how blood dripped from his fingers. His clothes were remarkably clean, but the pool of blood had crept all around him.

  “Reign.” I made it halfway up the steps when his gaze stopped me dead in my tracks. Fear, pain, alarm—all of it flashed in his eyes, but he settled on anger. I felt that look like a physical blow. Could I have stopped him?

  He didn’t say anything. Not a word. Just got to his feet, pulled his sodden coat around him and walked away, leaving bloody boot marks in his wake. Silence from him was worse than any words he could throw at me. Silence meant there was nothing left to say.

  I did my best. I’d controlled the hound with everything I’d had, but it wasn’t enough. All I’d succeeded in was sending Faerie back its monsters while invoking the ire of the harpy. This was Samuel’s fault. All of it. I had to find him, make him pay.

  “Samuel ran from the Hunt,” I said, turning to face Kael. Remembering how the Hunt had dissolved I quickly scanned the dead and the debris strewn about the square.

  “They aren’t here,” Kael said flatly. He’d guarded his expressions, but his hands curled into fists, and when he turned his silvery-eyes on me the truth shone through. This was far from a victory. “If they’ve remained, they’ll find him. He can’t run from the Hunt.”

  “We need to know for certain.” I made myself lock stares with Kael, to face the consequences. The alternative would be to see Shay’s body, and I couldn’t look at her.

  Kael cast a grim glare across Trafalgar Square to the line of police filing in from the side streets. He clenched his jaw and lifted his chin. “Nyx, go to Tottenham Court Road; there’s a chance Samuel returned there. Alina, return to Holland Park. It’s the only home he knows. I must attempt to explain this to the human authorities.”

  Nyx’s glance seemed to reveal my own concerns in the tightening of her eyes. People had died here, not just fae. The residents of London would want answers, they’d want justice. The general would be blamed. And from the resigned weariness on his face, he knew what fate awaited him. He could run, turn around and leave with us, but I was beginning to realize Kael didn’t run from his battles.

  “Go, both of you,” Kael ordered. “Samuel’s drained and exhausted. Find him. Finish this.”

  The thirst for vengeance kept me moving forward. I chose not to dwell on Reign’s words or the accusations I’d seen in his eyes. I’d find Samuel and I’d hunt him until the draíocht in me faded away.

  “We’ll stop him.” Nyx growled as we approached the steps leading down into the Underground. She cast one long look over her shoulder toward the general, and farther, across the carnage. And she knew, just like I did. London wouldn’t forgive this. It was all going to change.

  I tightened my grip on my blooded dagger and headed down the steps, into the dark.

  I wasn’t sure if the unnatural quiet had followed me from Trafalgar or if it had settled in my head. I have no memory of the train journey and walk back to FAHQ. The tears had long ago cooled and dried on my cheeks. The ugly horror of what I’d seen played over and over in my head. Shay was dead. Reign had killed her, but somewhere in that madness I feared I’d given the order.

  When I rounded the end of the street into Holland Park, a figure waited on the path outside the grand house the FA called home. The shoulders were soft, the stance loose, and my heart started racing.

  “Andrews—” What are you doing here? Are you insane? The questions caught in my throat. Light flooded from the lit windows and washed all color from his face, but not his eyes, and those eyes brightened. For a few foolish moments, I thought he might want to see me, and then I remembered I’d dug inside his head and yanked out his self-control. Guilt struck me in the gut, tripping my stride. He couldn’t be here. I couldn’t deal with him now.

  “Alina.” His voice, once so smooth and calming, dragged from his throat, broken and hoarse. “Just listen … Don’t turn me away.”

  I shook my head and scanned the front entrance to the HQ. The lights blazed but the house was quiet.

  “Is that blood?”

  I looked down at myself. Blood had dried on my hand and crusted where I still held the dagger. I’d forgotten I was holding it, and even now didn’t want to let go. My cheek itched and my hair clung to my neck. I wasn’t sure, but I guessed blood had dried on my face.

  Andrews’s right hand twitched. He frowned, then tucked his hand deep into his pants pocket. But his face creased with the effort of restraint. How long before he snapped and lunged for me, for the touch?

  “What’s happened?” He stepped forward. “You can talk to me. You know that, right?”

  “Leave,” I said, but couldn’t find the conviction to make it sound any more than a pathetic plea.

  The corner of Andrews’s lips lifted into a gentle smile. “I’m getting better.”

  “Better?” Becky had had the same soft brown eyes, I realized. Borrowed memories showed me the two of them together. He’d been the one she went to when she needed someone to talk to, not their criminal father, not their older brother, or their absent mother. They’d shared something special, a bond between brother and sister that I’d never really know, and now it was gone.

  “Nothing the fae do gets b
etter.” I hadn’t meant to snarl, or maybe I had. I should scare him away for good. Make him go. Make him see the truth. “The fae can’t be changed, Danny. They’re all monsters. And so am I.”

  “No you aren’t.” He said it with all the conviction of the detective I’d once known. I wanted to believe him, to hide in his fantasy. I could. All I need do was slip my hand around his and walk him home. By the time we’d reached his apartment, he’d be lost. I’d spend my days with him, nights too, soaking up his memories as if they were my own, like the parasite I was.

  The dagger felt right in my hands. Perfectly weighted. A part of me. The sharper, deadlier, precise part. This had to end here. For his sake.

  “I’m getting help.” Andrews kicked at the curb and laughed a little. And I knew what it was in his eyes. Hope. “I wanted to tell you, to show you in person. Sovereign, he, er … he got me into a great private clinic. I get the impression he’s helped a few, in the past …” His smile faltered. “It’s going to be okay, Alina.”

  Okay? He didn’t know about Trafalgar. He hadn’t seen what I’d seen. The harpy, the fae, the hound, the killing, the madness. Nothing would be okay again.

  “I’m going to be okay.” He breathed in and squared his shoulders. “And if I can be saved, then so can my sister. Whoever has her, what they did to her, this clinic … it’s expensive … but Reign said he’d help her.”

  His lips moved, I heard the words, but the silence I’d been harboring inside my head shattered, and the pain flooded in. “Danny—”

  “I know, I wasn’t convinced, but I’m here, and it hurts to be this close to you, but I’ve got it under control, I think—”

  “She’s dead.”

  Time stopped. Between one heartbeat and the next, the bright hope in his eyes dulled. His smile fell away. He tried to keep it—his lips twitched, he even laughed a little—but the truth wouldn’t let him lie to himself. “You—” He swallowed. “You know? For certain?”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry.” I could have saved her. Instead, I’d been sleeping with her killer. The truth clawed at my insides, but I pushed it back, pushed it all back. He could never know.