Shadow on the Water

by Katya Moore

  "Feel like talking yet?" I asked, ignoring the brandished cue stick shards.

  Burke goggled at me. "Look, man. I don’t know who or what you are. I don’t know what the hell she is. But I don’t want nothin’ to do with any of it. I don’t even go near Kiernan anymore, not since he started running with those tattooed freaks."

  "Really?" I leaned against the table. "When did he go over to them?"

  "They came to him. They knew he knew about her," he stammered, jerking his head at Sia. "They wanted an insider. They came for us, too. The regular boyos, the McKinnett’s gang. Told us they’d give us ‘untold power.’ Promised me they’d teach me how to turn myself into some sort of monster, make me fight harder, make me tougher. Told me I’d be part of something greater, that when the time came, I’d be ruling over Southie like some sort of god-king." He snorted. "I know horseshit when I hear it, so I bailed. But Kiernan Donovan… it was like he’d found religion. He was pissed. Pissed at McKinnett, pissed at that girl over there worse than I’d ever seen him."

  He turned his attention to Sia. "I don’t know what you did to Kiernan, but it changed him. Something snapped. He was lashing out at us. He tried to strangle Chester Malone last week. Something about him seeing something he shouldn’t have. Took half a dozen boys to pull him off. Chester’s still got the bruises. He’s bailed out on Kiernan too." He shook his head. "Andy Walsh is gone. Don’t know what happened to him. He was the other guy in that alley that night. We all know it was Kiernan, trying to cover things up. Andy’s probably washed out to sea by now." He set the cue stick fragments on the pool table surface and turned to fully face Sia. "What the fuck did you do to that man? I’ve seen him go through gang wars, through murders and shakedowns and all sorts of crazy shit, but you, a skinny little slip of a kid… you broke him. You turned him into a freaking cult-worshipping madman."

  Sia looked paler than usual. "I…" She looked at me, then at Burke. "Davy, that doesn’t matter now. I need to find him. He has a friend of mine. I don’t know what he’s doing to him, but I have to get him back. Where would he have taken him?"

  Burke’s mouth slammed shut. He shook his head frantically.

  "Look, man. I get it. You don’t want it to get back to Donovan that you helped us." I tried to look sympathetic. "But Sia here, she’s real worried about her friend. Real worried. And she might need to show you what she did to Donovan if you don’t play ball with us."

  Burke’s eyes widened.

  Sia picked it up and ran with it. She stepped forward, eyes glowing softly in the dim light, looking more threatening than I ever imagined possible. The shadows around the pool table began to coalesce, wreathing around her like tendrils of black smoke.

  Burke made a pathetic high-pitched noise. A foul smell wafted over to me. Code Brown. Silently, I goaded Sia onward. She took another step closer and brought her hands together in a vaguely arcane-looking gesture.

  "The cottage!" he yelped finally, staggering back until his ass hit the wall. "There’s a shack down by the waterfront. Donovan liked to bring people there to beat ‘em down. Stone basement, soundproof, easy to hose out, close to the water so it’s easy to get rid of a body if he goes overboard. Most of the neighborhood’s foreclosed or we bought them out, so no neighbors to poke around and overhear anything they shouldn’t. Cops got other things to do." He whimpered piteously. "I’ll give you the address. Just don’t… Jesus, Mary, and Joseph… don’t drag me down to hell. I don’t want you to rip my soul out. Please, just…"

  Sia slowly lowered her hands. The shadows returned to their rightful homes. Burke collapsed to his knees, weeping openly. I looked over at her and beamed proudly. Honestly, there was a big part of me that wanted to throw her down on the pool table and ravage her deliciously savage self right then and there. I settled for basking in her victorious smile.

  "You get to keep your soul today, pal. Be grateful." I gave the broken man a pat on the shoulder. He sobbed harder. Poor bastard.

  The bartender was emerging from beneath the bar as we walked past. "No trouble here, sir. Have a lovely rest of your day," Galen chirped at him as we headed for the door. The bartender looked back at the writhing pile of regulars, looked at us, and leaned heavily against the bar, head in his hands.

  We stepped out into the early evening air. Sia leaned against the front of the pool hall and took a long, deep breath.

  "Holy shit, I can’t believe that worked," she exhaled.

  "I can," I said with a wry smile. "You were terrifying. Well done."

  "Thanks." She smiled up at me. I felt myself stirring at the look in her eyes. Her pride. Her desire to please me. The urge to pin her against that wall and devour that smile was almost unbearable.

  "We’ve got the address. Time to go get Aric," Cass said.

  I brought myself back to reality and willed my cock to behave. "Let’s go."

  "No." Sia frowned up at me. "We need to call Alpha Squad and have them meet up with us. We can’t do this alone."

  "We can do this," I argued. "We don’t need them trying to show us up and getting Aric killed in the process. And I don’t trust Dario not to seize the moment and get his brother killed."

  Sia glared at me. "You didn’t feel what I was feeling when I was talking to him before."

  "Hostility? Stupid pride?" I rolled my eyes. "Dario Beauvais doesn’t have feelings. He has schemes."

  She cocked a brow. "Surprise. He was feeling guilt. Overwhelming, oppressive guilt." She crossed her arms and stared me down. "Trust me, I know guilt. He hates himself right now for letting Aric get grabbed. I don’t know if it’s out of love or out of pride as a great leader of the dragon people, but he’s dying that Aric got taken and I’m not going to turn down his help because I hate his guts." She uncrossed her arms and poked me in the sternum. "None of us are. We need the help. We don’t know what’s waiting there, but it’s going to be a hot mess and we’re only four dragons, one of us a rookie dragon at that. This is Kiernan Donovan’s turf, and he’s given it over to the Chosen. After that barrage at the mansion, who knows how many they’ve rallied there? It’s a whole block! Even with Alpha Squad, we might be outgunned. Literally. Donovan has guns. And men. And the Chosen have shifters. And magic." Her bravado was fading fast. "Even with all of us, we might not… Aric might…"

  I closed my hand around her poking finger and pulled her close, wrapping my other arm around her waist. She resisted a little, but only just. She buried her face in my chest and stood there, breathing hard and doing her damnedest not to cry.

  I stroked her hair. "You’re right," I growled. The words tasted bitter. "We can’t go this alone. We can’t risk losing you." She pushed a fist against my stomach. I grunted. "Or Aric. Fine. But we can’t lose you." I kissed the top of her head. "And I know there’s no way we can talk you into staying back away from this fight."

  "No fucking way," she muttered into my chest.

  I sighed. "So we’ll do it your way. We’ll call in Alpha Squad. And the security staff from McKinnett’s."

  Sia made a displeased noise.

  "We’ll leave two at the pub. I know. This would be a great time to strike."

  She nodded into my chest, apparently satisfied.

  "Cass, make the call. We need to get over there before Burke gets delusions of saving his own ass and warning Donovan." I wrapped my arms around Sia and guided her toward the SUV. "We’ve got a teammate to save."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sia

  With Alpha Squad, my boys, and the four McKinnett’s security guards standing in the alley, it was the most dragons I’d been around at the same time. That overwhelming feeling of kin was dizzying. I wasn’t sure if I was finding it comforting or nauseating, to be honest. Either way, we were a force to be reckoned with. Or, at least, they were. Standing there looking up at everyone, I did not feel terribly intimidating. Yet, here they were, all looking at me.

  I cleared my throat. "Burke said he’d probably be held in the basement of the cottage.
It’s soundproofed and…" I remembered the rest of what he said and my stomach lurched in horror. "It’s where they keep people. So we need to get in there, get down there, get him back up, and get the hell out."

  "Sounds easy enough," Galen said.

  Dario sneered. "And it would be, if he were completely unguarded. We have no idea what’s in there. We have no idea what the numbers are, who’s guarding him, what kind of security is around him. He’s probably warded, to keep him from shifting. He’s probably been tortured, so he won’t be in condition to run on his own. We need intel, and we don’t have it."

  "Which is why I’m going to scout ahead and find out," I replied.

  You’d think I’d offered to jump into the street and do a naked tap dance in front of the house. Every voice raised itself in protest. Even the McKinnett’s staff jumped in.

  I raised my hands and shouted over the din. "ENOUGH! Seriously." I glared at everyone. "I am a fucking shadow dragon. The first thing I ever learned to do was to hide in shadows. Can you do that?" I pointed at Dario. "Can you?" I pointed at Chase. "For the love of crap, guys, I can do this. I need to do this." A lump rose in my throat. I swallowed it down. "Aric’s my friend, and it’s my fault this happened. I need to be a part of this."

  "You are the last shadow dragon," Jared intoned. "If anything happens to you, we are lost. We can’t let you do this."

  I glowered at him. I felt my spine straighten, felt shadows welling up around me. "I am the Eldest Shadow Dragon. The Shadow Queen. You don’t get to say what I can or can’t do."

  Chase’s eyes widened. Galen wrapped a hand around his mouth. Cass stifled a grin. The Alpha Squad looked at me with stunned expressions on their faces, even Dario.

  "You can’t…" Dario stammered.

  "I just fucking did." Shadows wreathed around me, much as they had when we’d interrogated Davy Burke. This time, they weren’t a threat. They were a badge of office.

  Dario’s mouth worked silently for a moment. Then, a faint smile broke across his face. "Well played. If you want to throw your life away for my shithead little brother, we literally can’t stop you." The smile vanished. "But we have to aid you, and we have to protect you. If you’re going to scout ahead, you’re not going alone. Kane…"

  "Chase."

  Dario growled softly. "Kane has been trained…"

  "To be a big, fierce, wall of beef." I looked Kane over. He looked as stealthy as a city bus. "Chase has studied martial arts. Parkour. Actual stealthy things." I smiled at Chase. "My ninja. He’ll come with me."

  Chase nodded, trying hard not to look smug and failing a bit.

  "Fine. We’ll wait here. If you don’t report back in a half-hour, we’re sending in reinforcements to extract you and get the hell out of here." Dario locked eyes with me.

  I nodded slowly. "I have my phone. I’ll text updates as we go. If the texts stop, we’ve run into trouble."

  Dario blinked. Apparently, that thought hadn’t occurred to him. "Right. Or that."

  I turned and made my way toward the edge of the alley. I closed my eyes, leaned my back against the brick wall, and vanished.

  I’m coming, Aric.

  Twilight is, apparently, my time. Long shadows everywhere. I felt like a child playing a deadly serious game of "the floor is lava" as I hugged walls and eased myself into shadows. I squinted into the darkened windows of the nearest house and wished I had binoculars or infrared goggles or some sort of spy equipment that could help me out.

  I wonder... I took a deep breath and reached into myself for my dragon. Adrenaline was racing through me, so she was feeling cooperative. I felt my talons coming in and tensed, hoping I could control the shift enough to stay small.

  "What are you doing?" I heard Chase hiss at me. I waved at him from my spot in the shadows, embers glowing faintly along my arms.

  Aha. There we go. Suddenly, the shadows were a bit less dark. I sank back into them, my embers fading slightly as I did. But I could see. The interior of the house, pitch black, suddenly softened into a greyish haze. I could see movement. Someone was in there, pacing the floor, looking as anxious as I felt. He was slim, fidgety, and wearing the long black trench coat of the Chosen front-line fighters who'd attacked me on my birthday, the night I'd discovered this whole other world I was plunging into. He wasn't alone. I could see more, two or three, sitting along the wall of the living room, not moving. I moved closer to the window, pressing my ear to the glass. The pacing one was muttering something I couldn't quite make out. One of the seated ones, a bigger man, grunted something in annoyed tones at him. The pacing one kept pacing but fell silent.

  I reached for my phone to send a text to Kane, then winced at my stupidity. I looked at my talons, then my jeans pockets. Yeah, I’m not getting that phone out of there.

  I looked back at Chase, pointed in the window, and held up four talons. I also pointed to my pocket, then raised my hands in a texting pose and wiggled my fingers. He nodded, comprehension dawning, and pulled out his phone to text an update. Then, he looked across the street and pointed to himself, then the house. I nodded at him. Made sense. He'd take one side, I'd take the other, and we'd do our best not to get spotted. Chase began to move along the street, staying to the backyards. I watched him parkour-vault over a fence with catlike grace. He'd called it a thief vault when we'd trained. It seemed appropriate now, as we worked on stealing back my... our Aric.

  He made it to a window and peered in. After a long squint through the glass, he held up an open hand. Five more. And we'd just begun. I took a deep, steadying breath. This was not going to be easy.

  House by house, we advanced toward the center of the block. Each dilapidated house held a handful of foot soldiers. The further in we went, the more intimidating the occupants looked. Foot soldiers turned into robed sorcerers, pouches of essence at their hips. By the time I was across the street from our goal, I saw Chosen slithering in the darkness. I swallowed hard and raised both hands to Chase. His brow furrowed. I made a serpentine motion with my hand. The scowl deepened. He slipped behind the cottage and gestured for me to follow.

  Crossing the street sent my heart into my throat. I lined myself up with a dead streetlight. A dark shadow lay across the road, narrow as a balance beam. I frowned at it. This can't possibly work. I’d never tried to slip into a shadow like this before. I looked across the street and sighed. It has to. Thinking my most shadowy thoughts, I cautiously stepped along the dark line. I slipped into the shadows of the overgrown bushes on the other side of the street, heart racing, and made my way over to Chase.

  "Did you see me?" I whispered.

  Chase shook his head. "Nice work. I wouldn't have thought of that." He gripped my shoulder and squeezed. "I'm not going to be able to follow you inside. I'll be spotted in a heartbeat. Are you still up for this?" He paused, caressing my shoulder gently. "No one will fault you if you aren't. We've gotten more than enough information to make our approach. Kane and I can..."

  I cut him off. "I can do this." I took another breath and shifted back down to tiny Sia. Even though it didn't seem to matter what form I was in as far as hiding went, I felt more compact. More...hidey. "I'm going in. I just need an entry point."

  Chase smiled at my use of 'entry point,' then turned a trained eye on the cottage. "Windows look sealed off. Probably soundproofed. Except...wait." He looked up, then chewed on the inside of his cheek. "How well do you climb?"

  I followed his gaze. The attic window was cracked. It would be nothing to wiggle the pane loose and slip in. Provided there was no one up there to catch me.

  "I can make it." Chase looked doubtful. I shot him a look. "I used to hole up in the occasional abandoned house when I didn't want to go home. Attic windows are usually the easiest to get into. No one thinks to board them up, because no one's stupid enough to climb up abandoned houses. Except desperate teenagers."

  Chase bit at his thumbnail, then looked me over. "Be careful."

  I nodded, then turned my attention to the bac
k wall of the house. It was covered in weathered wooden shingles. Lots of good grip points, if they'd hold me. The gutter pipe looked a little shaky, but the back door frame seemed solid, and it had a small overhang over it. If I stretched, and if my sneakers were still as grippy as I hoped, I should be able to scramble up. The window had a sill I could stand on.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  I listened at the door for a solid minute. I could hear people milling about deep inside, but no one seemed to be too close to the back. Good. I reached up and tested the shingles near the doorframe. One crumbled in my hand. Another stayed firm. I swallowed hard, then stepped up with a foot along the edge of the door frame and pushed off, hoisting myself upward. I felt hands grip my waist, guiding me up the wall. I glanced over my shoulder and nodded at Chase. He slid a hand under my ass, pushing me higher as I climbed, until I could step a foot up onto the overhang.

  The overhang creaked ominously as my weight settled on it. We both held our breaths. It held. I looked down at Chase. From here, I was on my own. I looked up, squared my shoulders, and reached up to dig my fingers into the shingles.

  Someone chose that moment to go for the back door. Chase dove for the bushes. I flattened myself against the wall and held my breath.

  "...be right back," a familiar voice said. The door slammed shut beneath me. I closed my eyes and thought invisible thoughts. I could hear footsteps, the click of an old flip lighter, the first draw off a cigarette. I could smell tobacco smoke drifting up toward me.

  "Plotting the end of the world, and they still send me outside to smoke. Ain't that a pile o' shit." Kiernan Donovan chuckled softly to himself as he paced the yard. "Who'da thunk souls would be flammable?"

  The overhang creaked softly. I squinted my eyes shut tighter. Donovan stopped pacing for a moment.

  "Who's there?" he called. Silence. My breath caught in my throat. He chuckled softly again. "Hearin' things in my old age."