Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows)

by C. V. Larkin

  It was the first time Sio had met anyone who not only equaled his physical stats, but may have exceeded them. The all-stars made him feel damn near normal. "We're clear," Sio said, meeting the other male's gaze. "Now get out of my way."

  The other male hit him with a wolfish grin and moved only enough to follow Sio out at an interval that was too close for comfort. The pressure change across the threshold was equally uncomfortable. The air vibrated with an energy that rippled from an unknown source. All else was still. The street was silent. The ambient noise Sio had always taken for granted and filtered on principle was absent. On adrenaline-fueled instinct he threw a hard shoulder into the male behind him, picking them both up and driving them towards the deck as a wave of invisible force slammed into the security gate, warping the thing beyond recognition and ripping the door off its hinges. The mangled piece of metal was hurled across the entryway with enough force to lodge itself parallel to the floor in what was left of the doorframe over their heads.

  "Not bad," the assassin said.

  "Anytime you wanna help, Daediem," Tian answered, squinting into the darkness through the sights of her handgun. She was so shrouded in shadows where she was crouched it was impossible to see her clearly, though for a heartbeat it looked as if Daediem were going to try as he scanned the small space through his periphery.

  The assassin stood, dusted himself off, gripped the huge hunk of metal in the door frame, and pried the thing out with one hand. He glanced toward the street and the tattoo under his eye began to glow the dull violet color of early morning. The pale light reflected off of the hard lines of his face before being drawn upward and consumed by the black void of his right eye.

  "Get ready to move," Daediem said.

  On the heels of that statement a terrified scream went up in the night, along with a chorus of sharp hisses. Six wizards shifted into focus on the asphalt, materializing out of thin air in response to whatever nightmare the male had flung outward. The most unfortunate was decapitated by the metal security gate before he could do anything other than piss himself. Fucking thing must have been going a hundred miles an hour because it hit the street at an angle and lodged there.

  Sio didn't stop to ruminate. He shot forward off the porch, aiming for an open patch of road. He somehow ended up crouched in the distorted shadows of a trash heap half way down the block. He was caught off guard by the furious curse of the wide balding man who lunged at him, muscling considerable amounts of both age and bulk forward as if he were an enraged beast and this were the motherfucking Serengeti.

  The guy was brandishing a tire iron covered end to end in glowing runes, and since getting the hell out of the way had vanished as an option before it had registered, Sio caught the blow with a half full plastic trash bin roughly the size and shape of his assailant. He plunged the dagger Tian had given him through the guy's skull behind the hinge of the jaw. The wizard's eyes went round and dull with shock. The half chewed cigar hanging from his lower lip bobbled angrily, dropping ash and cherry red embers onto Sio's forearm as well as the litter-strewn sidewalk at their feet. The last thoughts of the dying man whispered like an exhalation through Sio's psyche.

  "They lied to you," Sio said to the corpse. "Everything in your life boiled down to covering someone else's ass."

  He'd never killed anyone before. He dropped the body on the ground in front of the battered hood of a nearby parked car and backed away, numb to the screaming adrenaline vibrating under his skin. Sio turned and took off running full tilt towards what instinct told him was Tian's direction. He didn't have to go far. He barreled through a blockade of detour signs that didn't exist as the surreal battle in front of him blasted into sharp alignment. Jesus Christ, how the hell had things devolved so quickly?

  Bodies littered the street along with a shocking amount of blood and several random appendages. He caught sight of Tian in the massacre, as if, declining to point north, his internal compass had been re-calibrated. She was covered in a dark sheen of gore and using what looked like an old school Louisville Slugger to hammer into the cracking pale blue translucent bubble surrounding a gaunt hipster. For his part, the wizard looked stricken enough to have realized he'd run out of ammo without a backup plan. The furious inner monologue in her skull blended with Sio's own, which was a surprising development that suited him just fine. Sio moved toward her and tried to ignore the suffocating iron efflux of death.

  A searing bolt of torment shot across his left side, upending him, and pitching him ass over teakettle into the decorative fence of a nearby Victorian with a loud crack. He blinked, willing the nausea to subside and caught a glimpse of Eamon behind the prick who'd kicked his ass. The Gray Man stopped short of interrupting Glenda's Death-star bubble and tossed out a casual remark before he got blasted. He hit the ground in a dark spray of blood, but the damage was done, the wizard he'd spoken to turned stiffly and began lobbing fire balls and invisible waves of force at his own kind with an almost manic level of fury.

  The loud crack of gun shots echoed off the rooftops and the muscles in Sio's chest tightened as he fought to get up. The sorry bastards remembered the last miserable shooting incident and before he could send some sort of soothing mojo their way, a large heavily inked hand clamped down on his bicep hauling him up right. Little bursts of panic ricocheted through Sio's nervous system on the heels of the contact.

  "Make yourself useful, shadow walker, or get out of the line of fire," the assassin said.

  "Shadow what?"

  Daediem turned and blinked at Sio as if he'd been slapped in the face. "Focail leat, you really don't know?"

  A sharp pain lanced through Sio's gut and he looked over to see Tian's broken body fly several feet though the air and skid to a stop on the pavement. Her hand spasmed once around the bat where she lay otherwise motionless. Her thoughts were a murky subterranean murmur as if they'd been strained through molasses. A foreign energy burnt like cold fire in Sio's chest at the sight.

  "I really don't know." It wasn't hard to hate himself for the truth of it. "How do I do it again?" His voice sounded harsh, too fucking loud in his own ears.

  Furious whispers in the back of his skull preceded a sinking sensation as a familiar pressure current rippled along his skin. Sio ducked, grabbing the front of Daediem's tack vest and dragging the behemoth along with him toward the sidewalk as the fence exploded behind them. He was so lit up with the glacier congealing in his chest he couldn't breathe.

  "Pull your shit together," the assassin snapped. A sharp blast of adrenaline punctuated the statement. "Focus on a shadow and will yourself through it. For me everything else builds like an orgasm. Hold it back until it starts to hurt, then pick a target and push."

  Sio struggled to focus, struggled to take in oxygen as he watched Tian's elegant form jerk and twitch where she fought to get up. He opened the flood gates, suddenly focused on the pooling shadows beneath her and getting there became all that mattered. The distance between thought and action was nonexistent and Sio found himself spilling out of the darkness around Tian's body as if it were a natural occurrence.

  Fury and fear built a tangible knot of ice in his chest that kept expanding and he either couldn't or didn't want to expend any more energy trying to choke it down. He let it grow, angry for a myriad of reasons he couldn't put voice to and an even greater number of reasons he could. The winter consumed him. His arms burned pins and needles from his collar bones all the way down to the tips if his fingers and in the center of the pain he found an unexpected recess of quiet solace.

  Tian's goddess-laced presence beat like a silent pulse in his throat and behind his eyes. Her touch held that familiar wave of ecstatic electricity and he hadn't realized that he'd reached down to stroke her face until that staggering connection shot fire through his permafrost veins.

  "Leave now or die," Sio said, staring down the barely perceptible domes of energy that shielded the remaining wizards in his line of sight. The statement was more
idea than vocalization, given the ice storm threatening to split his skin. It hadn't come out right, but every head shot toward him; the faces on most registering shock or mounting terror.

  Those who knew enough not to risk themselves for a lie became suddenly absent. He felt more than saw one or two at the fringes slip away, but the majority, the believers, stayed and redoubled their efforts in attack. Tian had called them Guardian and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the last defense was made up of seasoned veterans. Chunks of asphalt, glass, and warped metal carcasses were thrown from every plausible angle.

  The arctic pain was nearing unbearable when he heard a loud crack and realized Tian was back in commission. She'd intercepted a pressure field with the now smoking Louisville Slugger and sent it hurling straight back into the wizard who'd flung it. Sio let go of his death grip on the blizzard in his skin and the sky warped above them, dropping so low it kissed the ground before splitting open.

  Clayton Street became a world of ice and lightening. The battle was spun up in a chaotic whirlwind of thick white flakes that obscured visibility. The storm collected airborne objects and fireballs, hurling them diagonally from the heavens at the wizards and bundling what was left back into the air for another dizzy go round. The various bits and two ton ends glittered like the fake plastic filling to a snow globe at the mercy of a vengeful five year old. A flock of crows shot past, seizing the momentary distraction and slipping through the wizards' defensive cluster, splitting it the down the center. Anyone brushed by wings dropped dead where they stood.

  Gunshots echoed and the bullets burnt to nothing inches from the feathered mass of bodies like they had with the demon in Union Square. Sio looked around and found Royal standing at the foot of the stairs to Tian's mangled porch. The tall male was burning, literally on fire with an electric green flame so hot he was melting metal and mailboxes into puddles as he passed. Xavier was next to him, right side covered in blood from jawline to ankle. The sword in his hand glowed with pale purity shooting arcs of light up his arm and illuminating translucent wings in electric flashes.

  Sio's line of sight was fouled by a fireball aimed straight at his head. The gaseous mass was met by another full body bat swing from Tian. The resulting connection scorched her hands down to the bone and pushed third degree burns all the way up to her elbows. She winced, but made no effort to let go or move from her defensive posture.

  "Put us in the shadows of your enemies and we'll finish this," said a low voice to his left.

  Sio turned to find Daediem holding a knife in one hand and a ragged Eamon in the other. "Why?"

  "I've made old oaths and would not be forsworn," the assassin answered, staring transfixed at Sio's neck.

  "It is a sentiment we share," Eamon said.

  Sio nodded and thought hard, willed that shit until he felt utterly ridiculous. Nothing happened.

  "The Progeny have more right to this than we do," Tian said as she ducked out of the way of a warped fixed gear that nearly took her head off. She froze when she turned to look at him.

  "I can't send these two and they're standing right next to me. How are we going to get the wonder twins through the shields?"

  "Send Tian," Eamon said.

  "No."

  "He's right. I carry two Progeny sigils and even without them..."

  "I'll go myself," Sio told her.

  "No!" The collective response was immediate. All three dropped to their knees in the street.

  "None but Winter's chosen could do what you've done." Tian wouldn't look at him as she said it, couldn't meet his eyes.

  "What does that mean, Tian?"

  "It means that you are the rightful heir to the Obsidian Throne of the Unseelie Sidhe and you are marked as such," Eamon answered, eyes flicking down to the cool weight Sio realized was collared around the base of his throat. He couldn't see what it was, in fact he stood there like an idiot long enough that he nearly got beaned by a flying piece of debris. Sio dropped to his knees in front of Tian.

  "Tell me what you would have me do," he said. He cupped her face and raised her eyes to meet his own.

  "Finish this." Her voice was gritty, despondent.

  He ground his teeth together, overrun by her heartbreak and thought about being swallowed by the shadows beneath them. In that moment two things became clear, the first being that the Progeny didn't fit in the darkness quite the way Tian did, or he did for that matter. He had to take time to mentally sort them into their respective corners before he pushed. The second was, as it turned out, there was a learning curve to this shit.

  Chapter 30

  Bittersweet

  Vengeance was a funny kind of thing. It never burned clean, but it was a concept that even an angel could get behind and push like a motherfucker. Xavier lunged forward on Royal's flank in stops and starts. He missed getting crushed by the remains of a brutalized Volkswagen Passat and it barely registered through the haze of blood lust. Hell, nearly getting maimed only served to piss him off and the fury felt good in the brutal cold, consuming and righteous. It'd been longer than he could remember since his humanity had asserted itself so vehemently, longer still since the angel aspect had been in agreement, so he welcomed the bitterness and raging hostility with open arms. Fuck. God, he'd missed those emotions.

  *Quit reveling, dickhead, and focus.*

  -Does it look like I'm standing here playing with myself?-

  *It does actually. Perhaps you should KILL something to make yourself appear more useful.*

  Xavier ground his teeth together and shot Royal a dirty look as he resisted the urge to start bickering like a two year old. The world lurched beneath him. He struggled to remain upright in the dissipating storm while all manner of nonsense rained down from laughable heights. Objects plummeted to the ground like a puppet show with its strings cut. He and Royal scrambled to get out of the way.

  One minute he was darting around trying not to get toasted by an errant fireball or skewered by some impaling pointy object, the next, the bottom slumped out of the world and he fell like a stone into the endless pool of shadows under his feet. The resulting sensation was close to the disorientation of getting knocked out, a sharp drop preceding a painfully claustrophobic exile into the black. Xavier's face hurt. Chest hurt too. Come to think of it, everything hurt. The pressure was a full body vise, unbearable and increasing. The acrid tang of Royal's psychic laughter made him lose any semblance of composure. Xavier thrust the burning blade of Heaven's Middle Finger at an angle and jerked it upward. He flexed incorporeal wings and exploded out of another, considerably smaller, living creature.

  It had been a wizard from the fading burnt aural after images on the remaining chunks. Had it been anything else he would have been crippled with guilt. He wasn't. Adrenaline pushed him through the roof and realizing he was face to face with Sio didn't do a damn thing to improve his mood. It was hard to look at the bastard for more reasons than one, but the most immediate was that the guy's aura was like staring into the sun, white hot at the center, surrounded by a haze of glistening quicksilver, and Tian's golden balm. There was no sign of the fraying binding that had been unmistakable when they'd removed the male from Union Square.

  Xavier's stomach lurched. His emotions grew hazy. If he'd truly been an angel, the sight of Sio's ascension would have been a gift. Apparently though, he was human enough that this particular win felt like crap.

  "Quit staring at me, asshole. I know I'm pretty. Kill something," Xavier snapped. He spat several partially liquefied bits of gray matter out onto the street.

  "That was...gratuitous," Sio said. "You've got a lil something..." The bastard motioned to the ruined front of Xavier's shirt, then caught a jagged chunk of pavement aimed for his skull. Sio dumped the offending piece of concrete and bolted into the darkness after the wizard who'd lobbed the thing. One second Sio was there, the next he was just another shadow.

  Xavier stared after the vanished Sidhe long e
nough to become a target. He parried an energy ball, sliding around in the wet pile of gore at his feet. The lag time to his reaction nearly saw him sporting a visual hole in his torso to match the figurative one he been toting around. He need to get his head back in the game.

  *Been awhile since the last time you were inside a woman...though I'm guessing that wasn't quite what you had in mind.*

  -You're a dick.-

  An oily multi-hued gout of hell fire leveled a ten foot radius to his right.

  *Demon.*

  -Half demon.-

  *A distinction that is not only laughable, but inconsequential. Watch your left.*

  -Says you.-

  *I would know.*

  Xavier turned into the incoming wizard in time to watch as the oblivious fucker was jerked backward and dispatched with an audible crunch. The guy had been the size of a linebacker so it should have seemed incongruent that Tian would be left crouching over the corpse, showing no visible sign of exertion. It didn't, and in that moment like so many others, she was perfect. Stronger in the broken places as Hemingway would have said, and now all those cracks were fluid.

  "Zulpey deserved better," Tian said.

  That heavy cream voice of hers gutted him every time.

  "So did you."

  The way that he already grieved her was terrifying. Tian nodded without meeting his eyes, as if she weren't sure how to respond. She waded back into the fray, all sleek death and brutal indestructible efficiency while he was left there ruined. He mentally shook himself.

  Zulpey deserved better...

  Damn straight.

  The images of the innocent female's last moments were branding their way through his soul, and whether he had to do it clean or do it dirty the perpetrators had died with her. They just didn't know it yet. Xavier threw himself at the last defensive cluster and hurled The Finger into the weakening joint, where the wizards were using their own auras to bolster their shields. The broadsword burned in a clean haze of retribution as it arced through the air with a high-pitched whine. Three Guardian died as the firebrand made impact. Their own magic imploded ripping them to shreds.