Shadowed Ground

by Vicki Keire

  “With everything else that’s going wrong,” she sighed, inching out the bills and fanning them slightly. “This has to be…”

  “Enough. It’s enough,” he interrupted quickly, sweeping the almost empty food court with his gaze. “Count it later. In a dressing room or something.”

  “Where have you been all my life, Eliot Gray?” she asked an empty pizza plate. She was charmingly awkward, hunched into herself, blushing at the greasy emptiness of their shared lunch.

  Fighting? Training? Mourning? Running?

  He said none of these things.

  “Why Anna Townsend?” she asked finally.

  “Anna was your grandmother’s name,” he said, wondering if he was about to step on a landmine. By a silent agreement, they’d avoided the subject of parents and grandparents as much as possible since last night. “Your mother’s mother.”

  She didn’t raise her eyes. Her cheeks stayed flushed. “My mother always told me she was adopted. That she didn’t remember her real parents.”

  “She was fostered with your father’s family from a young age. So I guess that’s kind of like an adoption. But your grandmother often visited her. Visited you, too.”

  She swallowed hard and put up a hand, as if to stop his words in mid-air. “No. Please.” After a minute, when she looked back at him, her face had cleared and hardened. “We have a purpose here, don’t we, before we move on?”

  He shoved the remains of their lunch a table over and leaned in towards her. Her hair formed a half-circle on the table between them as she met him half way. He pushed a small stack of paper into the middle of the table, inches from her nose. He was all business now. He needed her to take him seriously. This was their first really public foray, the first of several, and he might as well get the ground rules out of the way. The outdoor outlet mall just off the interstate was as good a place for a trial run as anywhere.

  “Eliot,” she said warningly, one eyebrow much higher than the other. Her breath smelled like pepperoni. “You look way too serious for a trip to the mall.”

  “And you don’t look serious enough,” he countered, idly wondering if his own breath smelled like sausage. She didn’t pull away in horror, so it must not be that bad. “This isn’t a trip to the mall, exactly. I mean, it is. But we’re going out in public, around large groups of people, for the first time. If something did happen,” he touched her mouth with a single finger to forestall her protest. She jumped a little at the touch. “If they found us, or one of us, a lot of innocent people could get caught in the cross fire.” Her eyes widened. “Just because they don’t want to risk public exposure yet doesn’t mean they won’t. So, there are rules.”

  “Rules.” Her eyes narrowed, sharp as stakes, and he got a glimpse of Callista’s heir staring back at him. She inched her chin up. “I don’t need rules on how to conduct myself in public.”

  “You didn’t, Chloe.” His voice dropped half an octave, but he kept it soft, appealing. “Once, you didn’t. But things changed, and this is as much about your safety as anyone else’s.” Still the slitted eyes, the upraised chin. So much like her aunt. “Since this has a direct impact on your safety, I can use Command on you.” He let the words slide out like a gravelly purr. “But I don’t want to.”

  Deadlocked, they stared at each other for a while.

  “You have cheese on your chin,” she said finally.

  “Your hair is soaking up pizza grease,” he countered.

  Her eyes crinkled in a silent laugh as he rubbed his chin with as much dignity as he could muster. “Alright, alright, let’s have the rules,” she sighed, but her eyes were still laughing at him.

  He slapped a map of the outdoor outlet mall down on the table between them. He pointed to three circled stores. “You can shop here, here, and here. These stores always follow the same layout, no matter where they are. I already know entrances, exits, blind spots, that kind of thing,” he said, answering one of her building questions before it left her tongue. “They’re unisex, so I won’t look like a stalker.”

  “As much,” she amended, her lip twitching now. “You won’t look like as much of a stalker.” What had been unasked questions exploded out of her now as barely contained mirth. “Because you are, Eliot.” She threw her head back, laughing. All he could do was stare. Stare, and wonder at her, and try not to be offended. “A Guardian stalker,” she said, giggling now into both hands. “I can’t believe you strategized a trip to the mall.” She had tears in her eyes, she was laughing so hard.

  At least she was doing it kind of quietly.

  What was left of his dignity skulked from the building. He felt as if she’d punched him. As if she’d seen deep inside to his biggest insecurities and punched him anyway. He touched her wrist, eyes cold and hard. “This isn’t about the mall. These are rules that apply any time we’re in public, together or separate. Yes, Chloe, separate, because believe it or not, there are things I’d rather be doing than babysitting.” The ice cold fury in his voice, in the fingers touching hers, shocked him.

  She stared at him, eyes huge and rapidly filling with regret. “Oh.” She looked sideways sharply, then down at his fingers on hers. Anywhere, it seemed, besides his face. “Eliot, I…”

  “Do you think I enjoy this? This feeling of… of…” he felt his face contort with an anger that surprised him as he tried to find a word that fit, “vigilance?” The word came out in an angry hiss. “Of paranoia? Of terror? And all for you. You, who didn’t even know my name this time last month.” Her face was an ashen mask of sorrow but he couldn’t stop. “You don’t, do you? You have no idea. It’s like drowning, Chloe, or being hit in the chest repeatedly with… with this chair.” He realized he was gripping the cheap food court chair with both hands, squeezing mercilessly. His words slipped out, an unmeasured torrent, between clenched teeth. “And all because of a life, no, a history, I didn’t ask for and can’t escape. You don’t feel it. Not like I do. This damned bond. It gives me no choices, robs me of free will. Cass tried to warn me.”

  She sat perfectly still in the face of his rage, breathing it in as if it were ocean air. The chair frame made a cracking sound under his hands. “I didn’t ask for this either, Eliot,” she said finally, after a long silence. She breathed carefully, in and out, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, she leaned carefully forward, walking her fingers down his tensed arm, finding his fingers, prying them loose from the chair frame. She put his hands, palms up, on the table between them. Every move was solemn and controlled. “You’re bleeding,” she told him, without looking down. “You cracked the metal, and cut yourself.”

  He said nothing to her, anger crashing rapidly into sorrow and regret. I will not apologize, he silently vowed, her big solemn eyes holding his as if they were some element at her command. I will not apologize for who and what I am.

  Somehow she found napkins, wadded them up, pressed them down into his palms. He pulled his arms around himself, too loose to be a hug. He felt numb, cold, spent.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, hoarsely. “Now I’ve gone and ruined what could have been a fun afternoon.”

  “Haven’t you heard, Anna Townsend?” He found he was able, at least, to meet her eyes, even though the lighter mood of earlier was gone and his tone was bitter. “Guys hate shopping. Even Guardian stalker guys.”

  Chapter Ten: Apology Socks

  Chloe stood, wearing nothing but her underwear, in a dressing room with a fictitious name scrawled on an attached whiteboard. A much too cheerful employee rapped on the door. “Excuse me, Anna? Is everything working out?” a very feminine sounding, very excited man-voice asked.

  She knew the automatic answer, but the real one came perilously close to her lips. No. People-things want me dead. I hurt someone who saved my life, and he hurt me because he’s chained to me. Do you have another life in a different size or color? “Yes, thank you,” she finally told him, wondering if she sounded like an Anna Townsend.

  “Super. My name i
s Scott. If you need anything, let me know.”

  Carefully selected indie-pop, perfectly targeted to her age demographic, was her only companion in her little latched box. That, and her reflection. A pile of clothes lay untouched on the red bench behind her. She stepped so close to the mirror it fogged with her breath. She swept her hair up in one hand and turned to look at her back.

  At her scars.

  She dropped her hair experimentally, hoping it would cover all of it. It didn’t. Finger marks, like angry feathers, protruded out from the dark tangle of hair halfway down her back. A quick mental inventory of all the things she wouldn’t be able to wear, ever again, ran though her head. It included many things summery.

  “Everything,” she told the long-absent Scott, reaching for the pile of clothes like it was a history test she hadn’t studied for. “I need everything.”

  She’d managed to get a t-shirt over her head when a skittering sound from the booth behind her stole her breath. She dropped the jeans she was holding and whirled to face the possible threat. She noticed that she stood poised on the balls of her feet, her body tensed to spring, just as Eliot had drilled into her before she trashed his house and accidentally stabbed him with flying glass. “Who’s there?” she demanded, before she got caught up in reflections of her own bitchiness and lost all concentration. I will not call for him. I won’t. He made it quite clear what a burden I am.

  A pair of socks, one folded into the other, came sliding across the slick floor to land at her feet. She had time to wonder if they were large enough to hide an explosive and whether she should run screaming from the dressing room when she noticed a slip of paper peeking out. Intrigued, she picked them up gingerly.

  On the front of a folded length of receipt paper, she read the word, “Relax.” Torn between anger and curiosity, she unfolded it all the way.

  “Apology socks,” it said. She stared, dumbfounded. They were hideous socks.

  If plaid and argyle had an illicit affair, producing a shameful bastard child, it might come close to the pattern on these socks. The colors were what happened when a landscape artist battled with an airbrush t-shirt painter in the dark: sedate, respectable browns and forest greens battled for visual dominance with neon pinks and yellows. There was no garment on earth they would ever match. Ever. She caught herself rubbing one across her cheek. It was sinfully soft.

  “These are the ugliest socks I have ever seen,” she told the empty air. “I love them. Thank you.”

  A rumbling, fading laugh was her only answer.

  She tucked the ugliest socks in the world into the overflowing mesh shopping bag, searching for her smile. She felt it lurking just underneath the surface, but she couldn’t quite reach it. Her reflection looked like it was slowly trying to digest a sour piece of candy. She turned her back on herself, disgusted. Apology socks. They were great, really; they were exactly the kind of thing she or Holly would have given each other after a particularly nasty fight. But Eliot’s words from the food court kept coming back to her in random bits and pieces: Babysitting. Terror. No Choices. Robbed of free will.

  Obviously, she’d touched a nerve when she’d called him a stalker.

  She had been looking forward to doing something remotely normal again. A little shopping, that was all. Even if it had to be rushed, even if it was to replace a wardrobe that had burned when her house did, she had tried to lighten his mood. Big mistake.

  He was so competent at what he did. Always watchful, always careful, forever looking over his shoulder, she never guessed he hated what he was doing. But then, who would want his job? How shortsighted, how spoiled, to think that someone would actually volunteer for something like this. He had mentioned often enough that they’d been bonded as children. What kind of competent choices could a child make about his future. Obviously, he hated his life. Or used to. So much so that he’d been trying to escape. But escape what? His past? His home? She knew he claimed Gray’s Landing was the only place where she could be safe from the Abandoned. Even if she didn’t decide to make it her permanent home, she believed him that it was safe. She even believed it held the key to understanding the strange things she was able to do. And she knew it was the only place she would be able to eventually find her mother.

  But she couldn’t help wondering, if it was so all-important and wonderful, then why the hell did he try and run away?

  But then an even worse thought stopped her. Eliot spent years running away because of her. Because he’d been chained to her, training to protect her, when she’d been out having a relatively normal life. He’d dropped hints about what that training had been like. Weapons and fighting and endurance training… she shuddered. Her own life seemed normal, compared to his. It was a wonder he didn’t hate her guts. Suddenly, her vision blurred and her knees wobbled. She plopped down on the dressing room’s narrow bench and propped her head between her knees, taking deep, shuddering breaths.

  My fault. My fault that he’s chained to me. He didn’t ask for this life, and that includes me.

  The sour-candy feeling built as she dug through the mesh shopping bag. She’d just grabbed things off the rack, paying little attention. She dug out a pair of dark jeans and ballet flats, shimmying into the dark denim jeans with one hand. She’d just managed to get one leg into the jeans and was starting on the other when her dressing room door crashed open.

  Eliot stood there, his face chalk-white, eyes wide with alarm. He didn’t appear to notice or care that she was in the process of getting dressed.

  She didn’t even ask what was wrong. “Damn,” she swore, and shoved her other leg into the jeans. “How many?” She dragged the jeans up over her hips and fumbled with the zipper, her hands shaking so badly she had trouble making it work.

  He was shaking, too, but for a different reason. He looked as enraged as she had ever seen him. His eyes had gone flat and dead as they raked her up and down. “Two in the store.” She was barefoot and unzipped, but it was apparently good enough for him. He grabbed her upper arm and started dragging.

  “Wait!” she hissed, grabbing at her mostly untried-on bag of clothes as he pulled her, so quickly she skidded after him, down the dressing room corridor to a door marked “Employees Only.”

  “No.” His voice was steel, like the hand on her arm. “We’re going now. There’s no telling how many more there are.” He shoved her through the door, into what had to be a break room. A round white table littered with magazines, empty drink cans, and cigarette packs took up most of the tiny room. Beyond it, Chloe could see another door that led outside. It had a heavy bar across it with a warning sign. He loosened his hold on her arm only to spin her against the white cinderblock wall. He hovered so closely she felt painted there. “Listen carefully.” The gold in his eyes sparked as he stared at her. He stripped off his jacket. Underneath, he wasn’t as armed as he had been the night he came for her, but he still wore enough weaponry and blades to get the both of them locked up as terrorists for a very long time.

  Chapter Eleven: Landsense

  “You can’t run through the Gap with a sword,” she protested weakly. On his back, his familiar sword hung sideways. He had blades sheathed at his hips. He carried twin black guns strapped to his sides. She didn’t recognize what kind. She resolved to find out, if they got out of this.

  “I hope I won’t need it,” he said, touching the underside of the strange vambraces she’d seen him wearing that night he came for her, that seemed so long ago. He stripped them off in seconds flat. “I don’t think they’ll risk wraithfire here, but just in case, you need these.”

  He grabbed an arm and slipped the golden metal over it. She expected it to close with a clasp of some kind, but he merely ran three flat fingertips across the opening, and it followed his fingers as it melted into a seamless piece of metal encasing her arm. She stared, fascinated, as he did it with her other arm. The metal, faintly golden, was as lightweight as foil. It was decorated with etchings of unfamiliar symbols and pieces of the natur
al world: trees, a mountain, animals, a river. She watched as the second vambrace melted seamlessly onto her arm. “Wow,” she breathed, as transfixed as she was terrified. “But what good are these to me? Don’t you need them?”

  He had already released her and was opening his mouth to answer her when the break room door burst open. In the space of a second, he had gone from a reasonable person capable of carrying on a normal conversation into something else, something she had only distorted memories of from the night he pummeled Griffin and faced a horde of the Abandoned.

  He pinned her to the wall with his back to her. She felt his weight shift slightly forward, felt the quivering tension running up and down his body. Even through the cloth separating them, she felt his muscles shift and coil as he dropped his shoulders downward and shifted his balance forward. Arms bent but taut, they angled out slightly, within easy reach of his weapons.

  She couldn’t see over the solid wall of muscle and leather that was Eliot, but she didn’t need to. Her nostrils flared as the room filled with an unwelcome, familiar smell. It was faint, far from the full-on burning fire they were capable of choking her with, but it was still distinctive. They smelled as if they wore too much cologne, a sharp, biting metal-edged scent. There wasn’t another smell like it on Earth.

  She felt something new this time, though, pressed into a corner between a tower of employee lockers and the wall. She felt her body warming up, as if merely being in the same room as these creatures of flame called up some kind of similar reaction deep inside her. She felt her body temperature rising. Sweat broke out on her forehead, beading across her neck and running down the side of her face. She felt feverish, but not in a sick way. Rather, it was the heat of rage that pulsed deep within her. She barely had time to wonder at it; her temperature rose to the point that it radiated through her clothing.

  Worst of all, her scar pulsed as the creatures spoke, as if their voices had some power over her. Her Guardian stiffened and pushed even harder against her, sensing something changing, shifting between them. He radiated concern and confusion, not just at the creatures in front of him, but at the changes he felt going on within her. “Chloe,” he murmured softly, tilting his head and turning slightly towards her, “I feel you reacting.”