The Shadow City (The Demon-Born Trilogy Book 2)

by L. C. Hibbett

  My stomach sank as he melted into the darkness and vanished from sight, but Sam wrapped his arms tighter around my waist and heat surged through my heart, overpowering the fear. I crushed my body against his, and the ground began to tremble under our feet as time and space gave way to our combined strength.

  The room spun and twisted, and I felt the connection to every being in the net as we tumbled through space. My lips curved as I felt the flicker of life in Deirdre’s belly. A fresh sea spray hit my skin, and I opened my eyes to drink in the wild gray waves of the Atlantic crashing against the rocks at the base of the stone staircase. Eve twisted her body to face me. “Hidden Cottage? Why would you bring us here, Grace? Anyone could be living her now.”

  I reached out for her arm, glad that Sam didn’t lift his hands from my waist. “Trust me. This is the right place.”

  Eve released her grasp on Deirdre’s wrist to embrace me, and in a flash, the Angel broke free and stumbled onto the road as if the hounds of hell were nipping at her feet. Sam bounded after her, but she had already created a barrier around herself. He raised his hands to strike the shield with his energy, but Eve threw herself in front of him and gripped his wrists. “No, Samuel! The baby!”

  Deirdre’s fingers danced as she plucked a slip open. Eve approached the edge of her shield. “Deirdre, don’t do this. If you return to Circle, you are condemning your child to a life of pain.”

  The skin around Deirdre’s lips tightened. “I know what they would do to my baby if they find us. I won’t let them have her. They will never take her from me.”

  Eve turned her palm upward. “Then come with us, Deirdre. We need every fighter we can muster if we are to thwart the Circle and the knowledge you’ve gained from living in the City could—”

  “I can’t!” Deirdre’s cry cut through the air. “I can’t fight them, I can’t face him again. I’m sorry.” She twisted her head to meet Sam’s stare, and her lips trembled. “Truly, I am sorry.”

  The slip tore open fully, and the sound of honking horns and busy streets hit my ears. Eve dipped her head and gave Deirdre a sad smile. Her purple cloak swirled in the breeze as Deirdre stepped through the slip. She paused before sealing it shut and stared at Eve. Her fingers hesitated. “Eve, the Circle lied to the mothers—the ones they called the Keepers.”

  I watched her lips move, but my mind couldn’t process the words over the roaring of my pulse. Eve stumbled backward, a hand pressed against her chest, and Cat ran to catch her in her arms. The slip vanished. Deirdre was gone, but her final words lingered in the air and wound their way over my frozen limbs.

  They Circled lied. They never took your daughter—she was by your side all along.

  Chapter Thirty

  I pressed my forehead against the cold glass of the window pane and watched as Cat spun and tumbled across the muddy grass. Her hair was plastered onto her cheeks, and rain ran in rivers down her back. She lashed her long whip against one of the overhanging branches within enough ferocity to rip it free from the trunk. The window pane in front of my face heaved against its frame but didn’t shatter.

  I leaped back, almost colliding with Niamh. She crossed her arms and tilted her head in the direction of the cracked glass. “I see your sister is still working out her anger.”

  We both watched as Cat sprinted the length of the garden behind Hidden Cottage and took a flying jump at one of the flowering bushes, decapitating the top row of blooms with a crack of her whip. Niamh raised both eyebrows. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  “She’s still angry with me for sneaking off into the tunnels yesterday. She thinks it was selfish—I should have known Dawn would try and follow me.” Niamh’s lips creased at the corner as Cat’s knife shot through the air and embedded itself deep into the bark of a gnarled Hawthorn tree. I released my breath and sank onto the window seat. “I thought she’d be less pissed after a night’s sleep, but that might have been a bit over-optimistic.”

  Niamh nodded, crossing her arms. “Have you spoken to your mother this morning?”

  I winced and stared back into the garden. My mother.  I’d been yearning to use those words for as long as I could remember, but now there was a chance I could claim the right, they tasted bitter on the tongue, like they had been iced with layers of sadness and regret. A lifetime of unnecessary heartache.

  Eve had spent the night in the bedroom healing Lydia and Frank, cleansing them of the spells, sedating Lydia when Frank couldn’t stop her screaming. When I brought breakfast for her and the patients, silence hung between us like a wall. I chewed on my thumbnail. “There hasn’t been any time. She was helping Frank and Lydia, and then I was debriefing with you and Gabriel, and trying to stop Brandon from going to Switzerland to free Lucas and the others from jail himself.”

  “That boy—he is a stubborn one. I hope he can calm his rage or we will be forced to exclude him from the retrieval mission.” Niamh pursed her lips.

  I pushed my hair out of my face. “He just feels powerless. He hates that you and Gabriel protected him, while the Guardians arrested the rest of the cell.” Niamh opened her mouth, and I shook my head. “He knows why you did it, he gets that a Human would be more vulnerable in an Angelic prison than the others, but he still feels like crap. I can’t believe that after everything they saw that night on Grandfather Mountain, the Guardian’s turned around and captured the cell. Maybe Gabriel is wrong, maybe the High Council do know what the Elders are up to, maybe all Angels want the Humans obliterated.”

  “That isn’t true, Grace. I have known many good Angels in my lifetime—Angels who have worked ceaselessly to bring peace to the Human world, who see their Human colleagues as their friends and who grieve the deceit that they are compelled to engage in. The Council and the Common Angels don’t know, or if some do, they have yet to reveal it. Our source on the High Council is trustworthy. I believe the majority of the Angels are as much in the dark as we were before you met Jonah.” Niamh’s voice caught on his name, and she turned to the window again, just in time to see Cat hurl a rock across the garden. I groaned and hid my face in my hands.

  “She will forgive you in time, Grace, there are very few crimes that cannot be forgiven between sisters.” Niamh twisted her face away from the glass and rested her gaze on Dawn and Ozzie, who were playing computer games on the floor with Aza and a dark-haired shifter Demon. “We have no power over the past, it is carved in stone. Time will wear away at the rough edges, and perhaps one day it will be forgotten entirely, but the future—”

  Dawn threw her hands in the air and whooped with delight as the voice on the computer screen declared her the winner of the game. Ozzie grinned at her and tried to swipe the controller from her hands, muttering about beginner’s luck. I pressed my lips together tightly and swallowed, the lump rising in my throat. Niamh’s lips softened as she turned on her heel and began to make her way toward the other Demons working in front of the wall of flashing screens.

  “Niamh?” The Demon stopped walking at the sound of my voice but didn’t turn around to face me. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “It’s not a coincidence. Dawn, Sam, me, and now Ozzie—it couldn’t just be chance that we ended up being connected. Did the Circle plan this? Was Deirdre telling the truth about Eve and me? If you know something, from your visions…”

  Niamh turned her head so that I could make out her aquiline profile through the curtain of her long golden waves. “No vision comes with certainty. I see only what may be, not what will be.”

  “What may be—is it terrible?” I dug my thumbnail into the soft flesh of my bottom lip.

  For a moment, I thought Niamh might answer me, but she walked away without a backward glance. I stared into the garden again, pulling Jonah’s book from inside my pocket and turning it over in my hands.

  Brandon, Cain, and Sam had joined Cat now. Cat ran at
Cain and lashed her whip. It snapped the air in front of his face, and he spun full circle to avoid its crack. He swung to his right grabbed and Cat by the shoulders, but she flipped over his head and struck him behind the knees, bringing him to the ground.

  They lay tangled together, chests heaving, eyes locked. Cain leaned in and kissed Cat on the lips. I saw her face break into a grin and she jumped to her feet and sprinted around the corner with Cain’s Spirit Light tucked under her arm. Brandon shook his head as he watched them disappear out of sight. A fleeting smile tugged at his lips for a moment before he dropped to the floor and started a grueling round of push-ups.

  Sam paced the edge of the lawn for a moment. His shoulders were bent, and his eyes were as dark as the mournful ocean beating against the shore below the cottage. He tucked his blade into his waistband and jogged toward the front gate. I hesitated for a second, then slipped out the back door and followed him.

   I secured Jonah’s diary inside my jacket as I climbed over the rusting gate and traced Sam’s path down the slimy stone staircase and onto the beach. I didn’t need to use my Seeking energy to figure out where I would find him. I narrowed my gaze on the retreating tide as I picked my way over the stones and into the cave that Dawn had christened Smugglers Den during her Famous Five phase.

  Sam was sitting on a jagged rock just inside the mouth of the cave, turning a seashell over in his long fingers. He wasn’t surprised by my arrival. “Do you ever ask Dawn what she sees?”

  I picked at the side of my thumbnail. “Do I ever ask Dawn about her gift? No. She’s a little kid, my niece, not a random fortune teller at a fair.”

  “She’s not a little kid, Grace, not anymore. She’s a Seer—more powerful than Lizzie, maybe more powerful than Niamh.” Sam’s words pricked my skin like a shower of thumbtacks.

  I folded my arms over my chest. “Have you asked Dawn about her visions?”

  I clamped my back teeth shows as I waited for Sam to respond. He stared straight ahead, at the wind along the ocean. “I wanted to, pretty much every day since the last time we were in this cave.”

  “What?” I drew my eyebrows together. Sam tilted his head and pushed unruly waves out of his eyes. A familiar dart of electricity ran through my bones as he hit me with the full intensity of his attention. I tried not to let my gaze linger on his lips as I bit down on my own.

  “That day—the day of the first Spirit Demon attack—it was the first time you saw me for what I was. I’d known what you were for months, but you… When we found her here, Dawn was talking to you, but she gave me this look—she knew how I felt about you. I still catch her watching us sometimes. Like she knows something about us that we don’t.” Sam nudged a stone with his shoe.

  “I don’t like to ask her about her visions. I wish she didn’t have any stupid gifts.” I lowered myself into a seating position on a rock opposite Sam’s and pressed my palm against my jaw. “Have you talked to Frank or Lydia yet?”

  Sam winced and turned away from me as if my words cut through his flesh. I clenched my teeth. “You’re going to have to face them at some stage—you can’t keep running away. Refusing to talk won’t make it disappear. Whatever happened was just a mistake, Sam. Everybody screws up sometimes.”

  “I didn’t mess up.” My head snapped up in surprise but Sam’s eyes were fixed on the sand.

  “I didn’t mess up. It was Eli.” I tried to keep perfectly still. “The mission was a disaster from the minute we ported in. The Silent Home was protected by twice as many Guardians as we were expecting. Cain and Jabol tried to hold them off while we searched the rooms but there were just too many. Gabriel passed on the order from Cain that we were to abort the mission, but Elijah refused to come.”

  I eased myself off the rock. “Eli said he could hear voices coming from the basement—kids’ voices. I tried to drag him out of there, but he’s so damn stubborn. The Guardians surrounded us, and Elijah took the full force of the blow. I managed to slip past them and Reap Eli with me, but they closed a barrier around Frank and Lydia before I could reach them.”

  “Sam, why didn’t you tell anyone that’s what happened? You let the whole cell think it was your fault?” I inched closer to him, and Sam wrapped his arms around my body and pulled me between his outstretched legs and buried his face in my shoulder.

  “Because it was my fault.” I closed my eyes in defeat and rested my chin on his head. Sam’s whisper was so faint that if the wind hadn’t died down at that exact moment, I might have missed is. “Elijah always followed orders before, but he couldn’t do it. He was afraid to leave those kids behind. I should never have told him.”

  “What did you tell him, Sam?” My mouth was dry.

  Sam lifted his eyes to meet mine. “Everything.”

  Part of me wanted to ask him to tell me everything too, but the better part knew I could wait. It didn’t matter what my head thought—my heart believed Sam was worth waiting for.

     Chapter Thirty-One

  It was almost nightfall when Aza called for us to come down to the ocean. Eve stayed at the cottage with Lydia and Frank, neither of us brave enough to unwrap Deirdre’s claim. Dawn and Ozzie handed everyone tall white candles to carry. Cat looked me in the face when she lit my candle. She didn’t smile or speak, but it was a start.

  When we reached the beach, Sam grabbed my hand and pulled me to the side of the path, letting the rest of our small procession pass us by. He slid his arms around my waist and stared down at me. I knew if I let myself, I could drown in the depths of his eyes. His lips almost brushed my skin as he leaned closer. “Are you okay?”

  “Well—my sister hates me, some of my friends have been imprisoned by the High Council, and some of them are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. One of them is at risk of doing something really dumb because he has finally realized he cares for the person he has been torturing for a year. I’ve found out the woman I have been desperate to call my mother since I was tiny kid might be my mom after all—or that might be another clever plan by the Circle to mess with our heads. Also the hot guy who makes my heart and head hurt is going to set my shirt on fire with a candle.”

  Sam held his candle further away from my body, but pressed his other arm firmly against the curve of my waist. I tipped my head so that I could see his face more clearly in the starlight. The butterflies in my stomach escaped in the form of nervous chatter. “Oh, and the most powerful people in the world want to commit mass genocide, and everyone seems to think we have the power to stop them, even though I still short the toaster every time I try to create a shield. So, yeah, I’m okay. Wonderful, even!”

  I stretched my mouth into a wide imitation of a smile. Sam’s tongue brushed his lower lip. “You think I’m hot?”

  I threw back my head and laughed for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

  “Hey, careful with my delicate ego, I might start to wonder if there’s another guy that makes your heart ache.” Sam’s dimples flashed, but I could hear the raw edge to his words.

  I took a deep breath and met his gaze. “There isn’t.”

  Dawn appeared in front of us before he could respond. “We’re starting.”

  Sam and I followed her in silence across the sand. As we reached the water where the other were standing in a candlelit huddle, Sam twisted my body to face him. The wind had blown the tousled waves onto his face, and his dark brows were drawn together tightly over the green of his eyes. I drank him in. I couldn’t explain it to anyone, but just looking at him made my skin hum.

  He shoved his hair out of his eyes. “This…” He put his hand over my heart, and my chest pounded against his palm. “Even if you decide you want nothing more to do with me, if you hate the real me when I let you in, even if you don’t love me back—loving you has been more than I ever hoped for. I know that life is a nightmare right now, Grace, and I don’t deserve you, but I want you to know that if this world is worth
saving, it’s because you’re in it.”

  I grabbed him by the back of his head and dragged his lips down to mine, devouring him with a need that frightened me. I closed my eyes and let myself become weightless. Behind us, Niamh sang her haunting melody and the waves crashed onto the sand.

  Sam and I broke apart just in time to see the paper lanterns Dawn and Ozzie were releasing float into the heavens. Diamond and the souls lost at the Silent Home deserved much more, but I hoped they knew that someone grieved for them. Aza was the last to set her light free, and my heart ached at the sight of tears glistening on her strong face.

  As we made our way back to the house, Dawn slipped something soft into my pocket, and I wrapped my fingers in surprise around the small teddy bear I had found at the Silent Home. Its fur was still stained with blood. Sam stared down at my hands, understanding what it was without asking. His eyes met mine and fire blazed between us.

  We would fight this war for all the children. Win or lose—we would watch the City of Shadows burn.

  ***

  Thank you for reading The Shadow City. If you enjoyed this book, please remember to leave a review on Amazon. I love to hear what readers think of my books and the more reviews The Shadow Children receives, the more Amazon will help me promote the book. Your review doesn’t have to be long, even two sentences saying what you liked or which character you want to hear more about in the next book would be fantastic! I read all my reviews so I can improve my craft and I appreciate every single review.

  Book 3 (The Shadow War) of The Demon-Born Trilogy is available HERE 