by Jayne Hawke
The pack had all headed out, doing whatever it was they needed to do for the day. That left me alone rattling around the house. I debated going to the office, but there was nothing more there that would help me. Not really.
I refused to allow such morbid ridiculousness to throw me off my game. My pack was depending on me. They needed me to have my head in the game and to do what needed to be done. Making myself stand a little taller, I took a steady breath and pushed it all aside. There was nothing but the pack and the job.
Next on my list was a museum break in. There was a piece of art that I needed to deface, which was pretty far outside of my usual wheelhouse. Still, I’d done the recon, and surprisingly it looked like it was going to be one of the simpler things. I could use a nice easy win to bring back that phenomenal high and the assurance that we were going to win this.
Museum break-ins are a staple of the job on TV, but the thing is that museums only display things too well known to readily sell. Some things in museums of magic are powerful enough to justify taking on their own merits rather than for their saleability, but of course those things are kept under extreme wards precisely because something powerful enough to be worth putting in a museum is powerful enough to keep out of circulation.
Still, this wasn’t the first time I’d broken into a place like this, though as was becoming the norm lately it was by far the strangest occasion to. Sunburst in Spines was a beautiful marble piece by a human artist said to have been completed start to finish on the day of the Fall. The intricacy of it belied that, and as I stood in front of the ten-foot-tall web of sharp sunbeams the idea seemed particularly implausible. Still, they had an air of suddenness to them, a moment captured in stone. It was a shame that the megaminds wanted it defaced, but what they’d asked for could be accomplished without altering the piece irretrievably.
The image of what I needed to make was carved into my brain like everything else the megaminds had requested. There was very little room for artistic license, but at the same time there was very little challenge. With ease born of practice that had never actually happened, I used my earth magic to shear off chunks of stone and carefully placed them next to me in some semblance of an organised heap.
Each piece had to be placed just so, and patience was not one of my fortes. Nor was art. Yet there I was, slowly turning a piece of marble in my hand, getting the angle just so before I glued it back into place. Every length of marble was entirely unique in its shape, which increasingly made me feel like I was doing the world’s strangest jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately, there were no corner pieces to help me anchor the image that I needed to render.
Finally, it came together into a mosaic-style cthuloid face. I had no doubt that whoever found it would be incredibly confused. Still, I consoled myself with the fact that the glue could be removed and the marble melded back in its original shape with minimal concern once someone took the time to do so. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen until whatever shadow-realm shenanigans it was scheduled for had come to pass; the glue had been my own contribution to the idea, but it seemed to me that if there had been a need for permanence the extensive instructions would have specified. It hurt my heart to have disassembled it in the first place, and the fact was that it would never be exactly the same piece it had been before I defaced it, but there were far bigger things at play. I thought about putting some sort of apology up in lights, but I decided I’d left enough magical fingerprints.
Now the trick was to get back out. There was only one guard at night, and he’d habitually skipped patrols during my recon; that night wasn’t proving any different. I had easily hidden in the shadows to stay past closing, which had kept me from having to leave a magical signature on making an entrance. Breaking in magically would have been relatively easy with my experience, but there was next to no way to avoid leaving magical fingerprints when I did. Usually that wouldn’t be an issue, but when you dealt with big money or big publicity there was always the chance that someone would do the magical legwork to pick the magic of the place clean and find the little hints that tied a spell back to its creator. No reason to risk it if I didn’t have to. A wiser, more patient acquisitor would have just curled up in a shadow and waited out the night, but I had things to do. Things like Elijah, I thought to myself, smiling.
The wards here were powerful, but they prevented art from going out and people from coming in past close. For once, I didn’t need anything to come with me, and that meant getting out was no more complex than bypassing the locks.
I leapt from shadow to shadow on my way to the guard station, still fully wrapped in pitch black and grateful that at least one kind of magic could be used without having to risk some sort of as-seen-on-TV supercop tracking me down by the taste of my magic and the viscosity of my shampoo. When I got there, I found the guard steadfastly staring in the general direction of the bank of monitors. I summoned a chunk of shadow, formed it into a ball with instructions to return to its plane when it struck its target, and threw it at the camera furthest from me, carefully avoiding clipping across any of the other electronic witnesses’ lines of sight. When the camera shattered, it made a loud crunch and the display from it went blank, causing the guard to, at long last, leave his bubble to go and do his job, a sullen sort of surprise painted on his face.
He was surprised that something had broken, but also concerned that he was going to have to move his body more than usual. Neither was conducive to checking behind the outward-opening door as he left. I caught it behind him and slipped in, using the keys on the desk to open the back door that served to allow guards to quickly exit for external patrols – patrols which, of course, never happened since the lone guard was neither interested in being good at his job nor partnered with someone who could do outdoor patrols without leaving the indoors a free art buffet.
Keys replaced on the desk, I walked out the door without a care in the world, blending easily into the shadow of the building. The art defacement wasn’t a job I’d relished, but it was good to stretch my legs.
Fourteen
I decided to keep practicing my shadow magic on the trip home, teleporting from shadow to shadow as quickly and precisely as I could, knowing that surviving the next few weeks, or even days, might well come down to how well I could use that magic. One jump that should have taken me across a street seemed not to land. I’d been asked before what it looked like ‘between’, but there was no gap in time to fill. It didn’t look like anything because there was no time for it to.
This, it seemed, was what there was to see. Nothing but black. I’d always figured I was dropping into the shadow plane for an instant at a time, but from what I’d been able to glean communicating with the shadows, this wasn’t at all what it looked like. I had very little time to appreciate the large body of nothing I’d been favoured with a visit to when the goddess’ voice came to me, shocking even though it wasn’t a surprise. It was louder, clearer. Maybe this was her place, or maybe she was just getting stronger as her preparations for her intended return to the god plane came to fruition. Either way, the formless whisper had become a firm, deathless tenor. It was a voice I knew. The voice that had told me about a deal I hadn’t made for power I hadn’t asked for. The same deal that was coming of age now.
“You have lived well with power bought with a promise. Now is when that price is to be paid, and I find you creating nuisances. Nuisances you cannot understand. Nuisances you could not have devised on your own.”
She paused, perhaps hoping that I would fill in the blank. I let the silence hang, another layer of blankness in the empty place I was held. I thought for a moment she had gone, but her voice returned.
“Cease playing with the shadows and prepare. Your work begins very soon.”
With that, I found myself in the shadow I’d been aiming for. I had no idea how long I’d been gone. I had no idea what I was going to do when she finally realized that I had no intention of fulfilling the bargain that had been thrust on me. Even devil deals only
counted if you signed, right?
When I’d told Elijah what had happened, he’d frowned. A deep, crease-forming frown that filled his eyes with something dark.
“How many things do we have left on the list?” he finally asked.
“Too many,” Liam said.
He wasn’t wrong. We’d been making good progress, but even splitting it between us we needed more time. Time that it now looked we weren’t going to get. She was a goddess, albeit a fallen one. Her connections had to stretch farther and wider than ours. Which meant we had one, two nights at absolute best.
“What happens when she realises we don’t plan on playing her game?” Liam asked softly.
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t see a reason to lie to him. She’d chosen me before I was born, which I hoped meant that she had some attachment to me. The pack, on the other hand, had, as far as I was aware, no connections to her outside of me. What would she do? Use them against me to try and force my hand?
“Then we move faster. We double down. Sleep during the day for the minimum we need,” Elijah growled.
I loved him more than I’d ever loved him in that moment. The fierce determination carved into his face. Not to save the world, or defeat the goddess, but to protect his pack. The quicker we moved, the better chance we had to giving the megaminds whatever it was they needed.
No one answered him. No one needed to. It was time to get out there and move clocks. Or whatever.
Fifteen
When the other shoe fell, I wasn't sure if it was punishment for siding with the megaminds, a slap on the ass to keep me on my way, or just a random act of cruelty. The shadow goddess had shown herself to have sway over monks worshipping in her name before, but those were priestly, unfit things, their combat abilities unimpressive and their shadow magic several levels below mine. Apart from the jaguar guardians, whose connection to the goddess seemed to be tenuous, perhaps even historical, I was the only shadow witch of any ability I'd met.
When the dark-skinned warriors came to do their work, I failed to give them the credit they deserved. They, in turn, repaid my disrespect in pain and blood. The entire pack was enjoying a midnight picnic, the sort of oddball outlet that the wolves delighted in and refused to part with even under these direst of circumstances. We had each brought the two strangest foods we could get our hands on, and the things on offer ranged from pickled pineapple to baked lechuza in mint jelly. A lot of it was absolutely horrific, but that was part of the fun. Everything was new, no one brought anything they'd tasted before, and each dish gave a certain hint as to the sort of thing each person had been looking into recently.
We hadn't gotten far into our meal when the sun rose. It was barely midnight, the moon still visible moments before, but the sun was there, bright as, well, day. Out of it stepped exactly eight men, four sets of identical twins. They looked down at us, Jess, Rex, Liam, Elijah, and I sitting in a companionable circle serving delicacies and horrors onto paper plates with a shared smile of untamed bliss.
Elijah looked up at them, looked at the sun that could only be artificial, and asked if they minded if he put the food away. Four of them shrugged while another four nodded, and we carefully packed every dish back into its container, meticulously ensuring that nothing was wasted or ruined, and put them all back in the car as the desert sun beat down on our backs. When all was done, we turned around and drew our weapons. They had been courteous, so we returned the favour. I drew my life blade, and each of the pack drew their weapons in turn. Elijah's sword, twin to my own. Jess' glaive, a weapon I was sure she'd taken as her signature just because we'd made fun of her for it. Rex a massive axe, fit for a Viking duel. And of course, Liam had a surprise on him, a French-style sabre-and-stiletto combination. We stood in front of them, and each of us nodded our assent. They had shown courtesy, so they would make the first move.
Four of them ran forward, each bearing a shield and spear. The equipment looked like traditional African panoply, wood and hide and stone, but the enchantments on it were complex and indistinct, the magic at the edge of primordial. I wanted one. When they got close, they raised their shields and thrust their spears, and each of them struck out at one of our pack. We defended ourselves, throwing back their attack, and almost in unison counterattacked with varying degrees of success. We all ignored what we should have been focusing on. Their shadows. As each of them struck out, their shadows passed behind us as cast by the false sun at their backs, and into each shadow leapt a single ally. They had been sitting in perfect, smiling placidity in the place their line had formed, and before we knew they were gone they formed up behind us. The knives they carried drove into our backs, not one of us seeing the trap, and we cried out in unison as they shouted their triumph in tongues we could not comprehend.
I tried to leap into the shadows behind me, but before I could the men casting them had leapt free. I couldn't shadowstep, couldn't find purchase. I could step from shadow to shadow, but they could move from sun to shadow. My mind raced, trying to find a way to explain their abilities, trying to duplicate them. Whatever they were doing, it relied on the bond between the twins. The shield-bearers cast the shadows, and the knife-wielders jumped to them, through them. It was beyond my abilities, and that wasn't something I was going to accept. I'd find a way to replicate their technique, make it into my own. That, however, was for another day.
I shouted out what I'd come to understand even as I made a reverse thrust to catch the dervish, as I came to know the knife-wielding finishers of the pair. The pack had probably figured out most of what I had, but there was no reason to risk anything.
"Kill the Zulu," Elijah shouted.
I wasn't sure whether I agreed with his strategy, but with a coin flip in the air it made as much sense as anything. My reverse thrust didn't land, and I swept the blade in an underhand semi-circle to assault the man in front of me. His shield struck out at me, mystical hide guided by goddess-borne faith, and I let myself be pushed backwards by the blow. He followed up with a spear thrust, as went the classic attack, and I ducked under it before repaying him with a vicious thrust to the groin. He slunk back, pain in his face and his stance but no element of defeat or concession. I swept around to my rear, expecting the dervish to avenge the twin casting the shadow, and found my blade swishing through the air. Just as I finished the strike, I felt my Achilles' tendon sever and began to fall backwards. He'd known what I would do, had predicted my own prediction, and it had given him an opening miles wide. His only failure had been in expecting me to be faster, more capable, and going for a disabling strike when a killing blow would almost certainly have landed.
I fell on my ass and roared out my frustration, a thousand hours of martial training made worthless by a single perfect guess. The two men leapt on me from behind, thinking a killing blow was in reach, but neither of them expected me to have trained from this position. I somersaulted backwards on the power of my good leg, slipping between them, and when I came to a rest I had a few milliseconds to make a forward thrust into the kidney of the shieldbearer that threw him prone. I knew better than to rule him out, but it did give me an opening. The dervish, clearly never trained to fight on his own, began to cautiously circle me. He wouldn't strike soon, not as long as he felt my eyes on him. That meant I could help the pack.
None of them had the advantage. I resolved to train them to deal with shadowstepping when we were done here, cursing myself for having overlooked the obvious. To all appearances, I split my attention between the dervish circling me and his partner bleeding on the ground. In reality, I was feeling the magic around us. I expected to find hot sand beneath us, the impossible sun casting the world as some desert arena, but of course I found sturdy English turf underfoot, steadfastly holding its ground against the untimely heat. That was my trick - they were from a desert, and whatever gifts of shadow and sword they had been given, they were used to fighting on sand.
"Spell four!" I shouted, a cue they had all learned as part of ou
r training, and turned the ground beneath us to mud.
One step further on his path, the dervish's foot stuck in the gloop and he tipped forward. His hands came up to catch him by reflex, daggers useless, and though he caught himself immediately it was too late. I brought myself up to one knee and drove my blade up into his chin, pressing the weapon upwards until it lodged in his skull. He hit the ground, stone dead, and I pulled my blade free. As I expected, several of the shadow mages caught in the mud a moment too long, lost their balance a few degrees too far, or froze for contemplation at the wrong second, and were dead as the pack took advantage of the moment of asymmetry between those who knew what I was about to cast and those who didn't.
Unfortunately, Rex had forgotten which spell was which. He had already slain his shieldbearer, leaving only the dervish to contend with, but when the mud hit he was expecting gods-knew-what and was taken as much by surprise as his opponent. He snarled, pissed at himself for forgetting and me for causing it in the first place, and the gesture gave his opponent an opening. I saw the strike coming, saw his eyes closed and his muzzle raised in fury, knew that the long slash was about to end his life. I pushed my need to save him into the shadowy ally that sat always in hiding in my hair, the deadly secret that I brought out only in the direst circumstances lest anyone guess what I was and bring the full weight of the powers that be down on us. Infinity flew across the open space, fading momentarily in the sun before taking refuge in the shadow of the very enemy I needed him to protect against. He formed himself into a ring of spikes like a saw blade and launched up along the enemy's torso, leaving behind him a long row of puncture wounds and nestling himself into the arm of the dervish, the strike ending in a spray of blood as the arm was left useless, Infinity still stuck to it.