He gave a brief nod. “Seems like we averted another major crisis, then.”
“You have no idea. Or maybe you do. I remember the day she gave me my Lightblade . . . gods.” The reason behind the empty sensation finally dawned on her. “My blade. Where’s my Lightblade?”
“You didn’t have it when we found you. Anansi went back there yesterday but there were no traces of it.”
“Gods, that means the Avatar has my Lightblade.” She buried her face in her hands, trying to fight down her panic, her defenselessness. “How could he have it? He’s Fallen. He’s not supposed to be able to touch something forged of Light. How could I have let it go? Why would I have let it go?”
“What do you remember?”
She struggled to drag information to the surface, details fuzzed by whatever the Avatar had done to her extrasense. “I got a call from Gilead, saying that the sweepers had gotten a hit on Shadow-magic near the Fulton County Airport. She told me there was a special response team on site and when they went dark, I had no choice but to go in. They’d been put under the Avatar’s control; that’s how I got captured.”
She remembered then that she’d left him at the Carlos. “I’m sorry I left you.”
“No, you’re not. The timing was just convenient.”
True, she wasn’t sorry, but he wouldn’t appreciate that she’d left him behind as a safeguard. “Enig—the Avatar—told me he’s been planning this move for years, moving up in rank and power in the Shadowrealm and of course, he’s looking to make this world his new domain.”
“He wants to destroy it?”
“No, not destroy, just take it over and create a new world order, the usual Shadow Shuffle. He seems to think your dagger will help him with that. He thought I would too.”
“He wanted you to work for him?”
“Something like that.” She looked away. “He tried to bribe me. Naturally I refused. It went downhill pretty quickly after that.”
His anger broke free like a clap of thunder. She knew a curse word when she heard it, even if she didn’t know the language. “What were you thinking, going off alone?”
“I was thinking that I was doing my job.”
“It was a trap.”
“I know.”
“You knew it was a trap and you went anyway?” His grip tightened. “You could have been killed!”
She sighed. “I know that too. But I couldn’t leave the Gilead team there and I couldn’t take you since what the Avatar really wants is your blade. You’re not the only one who’s trying to save lives here. So I’m sorry if my actions threatened your karmic tally.”
“My karmic tally.” His jaw worked. “That’s what you believe this to be about? That I’m angry because you could have cost me my afterlife?”
“Why else? This is my job. It’s always been dangerous and the unknown is even more so. It’s why I give Wynne and Zoo an extraction time and why they have trackers on me. I’ve been a Shadowchaser for a long time and I’ve never been afraid of dying, especially if I take some of them out when I go.”
Chapter 23
Wynne, frozen in the doorway, gasped, a distressed noise that sucked out all of Khefar’s anger. Zoo stepped behind her, and squeezed her shoulder.
Kira turned her head on the pillow, grateful to postpone the argument with Khefar. “Hey, guys. Thanks for coming to get me. I’m thinking that was the closest call yet.”
Khefar remained silent as Wynne and her husband entered the room. The other woman set a tray on the nightstand before stepping back, her gloved hands in front of her. “You don’t remember?”
“He . . . the Avatar did something that blocked my extrasense,” she said, frowning as she tried to remember. “Then we had the whole stupid good guy–bad guy back and forth, and . . . and he drugged me. He jabbed me with something that sent me on a serious trip. I went from zero to full power and had to fight my way out. It gets kinda fuzzy from there. Did Gilead’s team get out? I don’t remember seeing them. We were about a mile from the Fulton County Airport.”
Her frown deepened. “You three keep giving one another strange looks. Somebody want to clue me in?”
“We didn’t find you anywhere near the Fulton County Airport,” Wynne said. “Are you sure that’s where you were?”
“Of course. I thought you said Nansee went back there looking for my Lightblade?”
Wynne shook her head. “We didn’t go anywhere near the county airport when we were looking for you.”
Her heart thumped. “Then Sanchez might have found it. Logistics directed me to a warehouse in the industrial complex there. I would like to know if the response team was extracted safely, but I’m not ready to talk to Sanchez yet. I spoke to Balm, but she didn’t mention the team. Still can’t believe Sanchez sent a team after the Fallen like that. She’s the one who’s always talking about protocol.”
“At least there was more than one of them,” Khefar muttered.
She ignored him. “If you didn’t find me in the warehouse area, where exactly did you find me?”
“At Oakland Cemetery.” Zoo moved to stand behind his wife. “We think they injected you with concentrated Chaos magic,” he said. “I didn’t know something like that was possible. Light and Shadow were basically duking it out in your veins.”
“The Avatar wanted me to join him. When I refused, he promised to break me. Injecting a Shadowchaser with liquid Chaos would do it, I guess. I’ll have to let Gilead know about this.” She got a good look at Zoo, saw his right arm swathed in bandages. “What the hell happened to you?”
Wynne started to cry. “Oh, Kira . . . ”
“What happened?” Wynne didn’t cry. She was an army brat from a family of army brats, and a combat vet to boot. Wynne didn’t break easily.
Kira’s fingers tightened on Khefar’s as she thought about her new eye color, the holes in her memory, the nightmare landscape she’d dreamed about. Was it more than a dream? “Somebody tell me something here.”
Khefar squeezed her hand. “They dumped you close to an abandoned warehouse not far from Oakland Cemetery, near where many of the homeless gather for the night. Some of them tried to help you. Others tried to hurt you.”
“No, there weren’t any humans around.” Her brow furrowed. “There were halflings. He—the Avatar—let them taste me and t-touch me after he drugged me. All I could think of was escape, trying to make it through the commotion and the screaming. They kept touching me and it . . . it just felt wrong. I wanted them to stop. Gods, I wanted to get away as fast as I could.”
She looked up at him, dread coiling in the pit of her stomach. “I thought they were attacking me,” she said, her voice just a slice of its usual tone. “Their faces were all twisted and dark. Are you telling me that they weren’t halflings, but human homeless people trying to help me?”
“You didn’t know, Kira. You were going on pure instinct, the instinct of a Shadowchaser. It wasn’t your intent to do them harm.”
“Harm.” She pulled her hands away from his, fisted them atop the sheets. “I was out of my mind, thinking I was fighting halflings, but in reality I was in the middle of a bunch of innocent humans. Did I . . . did I hurt people?”
Wynne’s sob was answer enough, but she had to know. Her lips twisted as she fought to push the words out. “I . . . I did more than hurt people, didn’t I?”
She looked at Khefar. She looked at him because she couldn’t look at Wynne and Zoo, couldn’t look in her friends’ faces and see the condemnation there. She could look at the Nubian warrior and know that he would know, and understand, the burden of innocent souls weighing down her own—the guilt, the anger, the unrelieved heaviness that threatened to suck her under.
“How many?” She bit her lip to keep from screaming. “Tell me. How many people did I murder?”
“Kira . . . ”
“How. Many.”
Khefar held her gaze and when he spoke he didn’t hesitate. “Eight died at the scene. Two more died on t
he way to the hospital, five others are comatose, and several were kept overnight. The media is claiming that they were caught in the factory fire.”
A whimper of sound from Wynne.
“You somehow managed to get yourself to the cemetery. Nansee found your trail. That’s how we located you,” the warrior added.
She turned her head toward her friends but didn’t dare look at them. “Zoo’s arm. Were you trying to protect me?”
“I was careless and you got the jump on me,” the witch said, his tone a forced brightness. “The Nubian took a hit too. You surprised us with that throwing blast thing.”
“Blast thing? I hurt you?” Her world tilted crazily for a moment. “I attacked you?”
“Not your fault. You did try to warn me, even though you didn’t know it was me.”
She couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t she remember? “I didn’t even recognize my own friends?”
“Hey, I’ll survive. Good thing I’m left-handed.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I—” She dropped her head, hiding behind her braids. She’d attacked her friends and killed innocent people. It went against everything she stood for, that Shadowchasers stood for. Slowly she pushed her hands beneath the covers, hiding them. “I’ll make this right. I swear, I’ll make this right.”
“It’s not your fault.”
She wanted to believe Wynne. Wanted to believe that Wynne believed that. But she’d seen Wynne’s expression as she looked at her husband. They all knew that he’d gotten injured trying to help her. Nothing could change the fact that if it wasn’t for her, Zoo wouldn’t have gotten injured and she wouldn’t have seen the hurt in Wynne’s eyes. But she had seen it, and knew it would take a while before it disappeared.
She’d hurt strangers, hurt her friends. No, it registered: worse than that, she’d murdered people, attacked her friends. She’d done what halflings had been doing for ages—attacking innocents just because they could.
You belong to Shadow. You just don’t know it yet.
How much further could she stretch before she broke?
She fisted her hands. No. She knew she could not break. That was what they wanted, what everyone wanted. What the Avatar wanted. She was stronger than that. She would not break.
“I have to get home.”
Wynne protested. “You can’t leave yet—you’re still injured!”
“I have to. I’ve been out of sight two whole days. The city—at least those I protect it against—will wonder and Gilead will want a report. I can’t let them connect me to what happened—to what I did to those poor people. Not until after I stop the Avatar. Sanchez will think I’ve gone over and she’ll send her Commission goons after me, no matter what Balm tells her. I can’t let that happen.”
“Okay.” Wynne stood. Kira tensed, waiting for something, anything. Take it. Whatever she says or does, take it. You almost killed her husband. You deserve whatever she decides to give you.
Wynne backed away. “I finished the dagger.”
It took her a moment to swim out of misery to realize what Wynne meant. Her friend had backed away from her. “Really?”
“Yeah. I needed something to do to keep my mind off—I mean, you know I always have to have something to do.”
Kira winced, the flash of pain as quick and deep as a dagger strike. I made my friends suffer and they helped me anyway. Zoo could have healed himself, but he’d used his magic on me instead. How do you repay people for something like that? “Will you give it to Khefar? He needs to hold it for a while anyway to put some of his essence into it.”
“I guess, but . . . ” Wynne’s voice trailed off.
“Khefar, do you have your car here?”
“Yes. What dagger do you speak of?” Khefar was clearly puzzled.
Right. She hadn’t told him yet. She didn’t want to tell him now, knowing that it would just infuriate him. “I’ll talk to you about it later, I promise. Will you take me home?”
The Nubian nodded, his expression telling her that he’d hold her to her promise.
“Kira,” Zoo said, “we can take you to your place as soon as we close up shop.”
“No thanks. Got a ride.” She tried to smile. “Besides, you need to rest up that arm.” Kira didn’t mention she didn’t want them near her warehouse as it might expose them to more danger. They’d figure that out, too, soon enough.
“Okay. I guess you’re right,” Zoo said.
Wynne said, “I can’t give you the dagger to take with you right now, Khefar. Zoo still needs to add some magic to it . . . ”
Khefar again nodded his assent. “I’m sure we can . . . make arrangements later regarding this mysterious dagger I know nothing about.” His eyes darted to Kira. Was he judging her?
“Right,” Zoo said. “I’ll do my part tonight, then. Wynne?” He opened the door with his right hand. “Let’s get back to the shop, let Kira get ready to go home.”
She didn’t relax until her friends left the room, closing the door behind them. Were they still her friends? Would their friendship survive when this was over and done?
Sudden, crushing loneliness gripped her. She was losing everything that had ever mattered to her, bit by precious bit. Bernie, her blade, her powers, her friends. Even if she killed Enig, even if she recovered her blade and her powers, the loss of her friends would be too high a price to pay.
Khefar broke the heavy silence. “You should try to eat something.”
She looked at the tray. Nausea, hunger, and dread churned in equal parts. “I can’t. I know she used gloves, but I-I can’t feel my extrasense. I wouldn’t be able to cleanse it. I can’t take the chance of touching it and finding out what she really thinks about me hurting Zoo—”
“You don’t think she’ll hate you?”
“I could handle that, if she hated me. But if my friends are afraid of me . . . ”
A small sound escaped her. She stifled the rest of it, but it was hard and it hurt. Everything hurt. Thinking hurt. The darkness suddenly seemed more welcoming to her than this, better than this.
The Nubian touched her shoulder, and the darkness retreated slightly. “Do you need help to get up?”
“I think I can make my body obey me.” She willed her legs to swing over the side of the bed and felt slightly surprised when they obeyed. Her feet and legs were bare, and she wore panties and a loose tank, both unbleached Egyptian cotton. So much skin showing, but not her hands, not yet. Those stayed tangled in the sheet, safely hidden.
She stared down at her legs. Memory flashed like a slide show. There had been blood and bruises and cuts, gone now. They had healed her, her friends, despite her having hurt them. It hadn’t been easy letting them in to start with, allowing them to be a part of who she was and what she did. She wondered now if they regretted knowing her. But if she didn’t have them, where would she be? Still in the cemetery with its memories of dead and grieving people? Dead herself? Or worse—targeted by local police and perhaps Gilead itself.
Again her eyes were drawn to her bare skin. No sheen of either yellow Shadow-magic or the blue of her own power. She hadn’t even thought about it when she’d first awakened. Now she couldn’t feel it, didn’t dare reach for it. What if she tried and it didn’t come? What if she’d permanently lost her power?
She’d dreamed of being without it, fantasized about being Normal. Even after losing Nico, she’d dreamed about it. But now, facing a reality without her extrasense, it terrified her. She wouldn’t be anything without her power except dead.
“Kira.”
“There should be a change of clothes in the top drawer of the dresser there, wrapped in plastic.” Her jaw tightened against the scream that bubbled deep in her belly, but she could feel it in her mind, deep in every fiber, desperately trying to claw its way out.
She’d killed innocents, hurt her friends. She asked herself: How much Shadow lurked in her soul now? Was she more Shadow than Light? Enig had said she belonged to Shadow. She’d denied it, but n
ow she couldn’t help wondering. Her eyes had changed. She had changed. Did that mean she was too far gone, so far beyond redemption that the Light had taken her power and turned away from her?
She started a silent prayer to Ma’at but stopped herself. She was afraid to test her relationship to the goddess in any way, yet knowing that if the Light had abandoned her, she was in major trouble. Despite being favored by the head of Gilead, Kira knew Balm would have no compunction about ordering containment if one of her Shadowchasers, even her own daughter, no longer walked in Light. Sanchez would throw everything she could at subduing Kira, and she’d resist. Her resistance would turn the town into a war zone.
“Anything else you need?”
“I should be capable of dressing myself.” She tried dredging up a smile in his general direction. “If I can’t, that would be a good argument for not going anywhere anytime soon, wouldn’t it?”
Khefar left her, softly closing the door behind him before leaning heavily against it once outside the room. His heart ached for her. He couldn’t be angry with her, not when she’d just been emotionally devastated. All he could do was promise to be there for her. He knew what it meant to have innocent blood staining one’s hands. He also knew it never truly faded.
Kira was at her breaking point. He’d seen it in the slump of her shoulders, the tremor in her fingers. He couldn’t press her about going off alone, question her about the dagger she’d had Wynne create—no doubt a replica of his. Those things could wait. What mattered now, more than anything, was making sure she stayed away from the shadows that threatened to consume her.
“Nansee.”
The demigod materialized beside him. “Yes?”
“I need you to spin up a block around us and Kira’s room. Quickly.”
Thankfully the spider god didn’t ply him with questions. Instead, he placed his palms flat against the door. Khefar felt the rush of power as it swept through him and down the hall. He pressed his forehead against the door and waited.
The first short shriek still caught him like the lightning-quick slam of a rifle shot. It was followed by another pain-filled wail, then another. Then more, blending into one long scream of agony.
Shadow Blade Page 21