Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels)

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  Not this time.

  I ran through the trees. It was eerie. Nothing moved. Not even snow fell. Magic saturated the air so thick I could hardly breathe. It blinded my trace sight with opaque rainbow shimmers. I’d never experienced anything like it.

  At the edge of the trees, I stopped. Rather, something stopped me. I ran into a wall of air. Inside was a whirl of dust and debris. I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me. It was like staring through a window into the heart of a tornado. It’s entirely possible a Kansas farmhouse whirled by, maybe a tin man and a scarecrow.

  I pressed up against the invisible wall. It was hard as rock, just like the cocoon that had held me. I jerked back as a chunk of something battered just above my head and vanished into the spinning mess.

  I was impressed. Despite cascading and erupting like a volcano on steroids, Price had managed to control his talent. At least enough to contain the disaster inside this wall and protect me. And protect the rest of my family. For now. I scowled at the murky darkness in front of me. How much longer could he hold on? I had to get to him and help him stop the cascade somehow.

  The idea of going inside the air wall was obviously not the brightest. I didn’t have a choice. Price had to be stopped, and I was the only one left standing to do it. I was the only one he might listen to. Might. If he was willing to believe I was really me. I grimaced. Time for him to get his eyes opened.

  Getting inside was the first hard part. I could try to tear a window into his wall by sucking down power, but I had no good place to put the magic. I couldn’t just release it into the air or the ground. I had to create something with it. Maybe if I found a big boulder or something like it, I could channel the energy into the rock and create a massive null. Plus, he’d likely just feed more energy into the wall. Which meant I’d pretty much need to take the whole thing down.

  I chewed my lower lip as I considered. I’d have to outlast Price. Given this stunning display of his talent, I wasn’t sure I could. I was probably the strongest tracer alive, but he was something else altogether. Manipulating the elements took enormous power. I’d never actually seen an elemental talent before. In the early days, they usually ended up dead. They were too scary to let live. Nowadays, either they kept themselves well hidden, or they were enslaved to a Tyet organization or a government. I wondered if the FBI suspected what he was. But no, they’d have grabbed him much sooner if so.

  Given that FBI reinforcements were on their way, I needed to find a way through sooner rather than later. That’s when I remembered the pipe that Jamie and Leo had used to cross under the fence and up to the building. Just the thought of crawling through it made my body clench and my heart jump into high gear. No choice. I turned along the wall and started jogging through the trees, not letting myself think about what could go wrong.

  I reached the hole. It gaped at me. I didn’t even have a light. If I did this, it would be in pitch-darkness, and who knew if the other end was even open or if it had been covered over by Price’s maelstrom.

  Before I could talk myself out if it, I jumped down inside. The pipe was about three to three and a half feet across. Leo and Jamie must have sized it up to help them get through. I lowered myself down onto my stomach and began crawling. My brothers had flattened the corrugations in the bottom of the pipe, making it more comfortable, leaving the ridges in the sides to give purchase for feet.

  The noise of the storm above roared, echoing down from ahead. Hopefully that meant the exit was clear. I clung to that thought as I wriggled along. Before long my elbows, knees, and toes ached and throbbed. Even flattened, the bottom of the pipe was hard and held an unreasonable amount of rocks and sticks. The floor was muddy, with water pooling here and there, adding to my chill.

  I kept my eyes closed, imagining I wasn’t inside an underground metal tube. I don’t know if the events of the night had already numbed me to fear or if I actually convinced my head that I wasn’t in a really long coffin, but I managed to stay relatively sane and to keep moving. Maybe it was just knowing that people were counting on me. My family was counting on me.

  I dropped into trace sight, but the thick rainbow magic made it impossible to check anybody’s trace. I scooted faster.

  Once again, I was totally soaked in sweat and mud by the time I reached the end of the road. I couldn’t imagine how bad I smelled. I felt the push and tug of the wind before I reached the end. I stopped a yard or so from the opening, which actually still was open, bonus for me. Fingers of wind scooped down inside the pipe, shoving me back. I spread my legs and braced myself, refusing to give ground. I tried to remember what was ahead. The FBI building was probably ten feet from the exit hole. Or it had been.

  What was I going to find? Would I even be able to get through the maelstrom to find Price? In the darkness, I snarled with fierce determination. I’d come too far not to. Hell, I’d crawled through a fucking hole in the ground. There was no way I was going to lose this game now. I had his trace. Even if I couldn’t see it, I could feel it. That meant I could find him anywhere. I just had to hope I didn’t get pulverized by a flying house on the way. I wouldn’t want to end up like the Wicked Witch of the East. Though I could have used a pair of ruby slippers right about now.

  It would be a whole lot easier if I could just travel through the trace to him. But Mom had said that would be very bad. I had to believe her. As plans went, running through a tornado seemed pretty stupid, and yet I couldn’t think of any other options. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe the building was still standing and I’d be able to crawl inside and gain some protection that way. Right. Because the last time Volcano Price had erupted, he’d scraped off half a mountain. A building was totally stronger than a little mountain, right?

  I was fucked.

  Get on with it, I told myself, and then decided to stop thinking so hard and just do it.

  I crawled down to the opening. My ears popped and gritty wind sanded my skin. I squinched my eyes to slits. Wind pummeled me. The still sane part of my brain balked. Was I really going to do this? This was suicidal. What choice did I have? I asked myself. As if in answer, an idea sparked. I could try one other thing. I wriggled backward down the pipe, out of the wind’s immediate reach. For once being in the narrow confines felt safer than being out.

  I reached into the cold of the trace world and grabbed Price’s trace, wrapping it around my hand. A landslide of emotion crashed over me. Fear, exultation, fury, joy, hate, exhilaration, guilt. The torrent filled me. Inwardly, I clawed to hold on to myself. It took all I had, and I knew I couldn’t last. Surely if I could feel him, I could make him feel me? I collected myself around the little stubborn wart in my brain that had saved me before. I focused, sending a sharp pulse down his trace, at the same time yanking on it as I had before.

  Nothing happened. I did it again and then twice more as desperation mounted.

  I could feel it when Price became aware of me. Curiosity colored the maelstrom of his emotions. The next thing I knew, the air in the pipe thickened. A cataract of rainbow energy poured inside from the hole ahead. My mouth went dry. Air rushed over me and under me. It pressed inward, molding to my body. I clutched down on Price’s trace as my ribs compressed and my breath leaked from my lungs.

  My claustrophobia returned with a vengeance. In the dark, being squished from all sides, panic jumped into the driver’s seat. I wriggled and fought, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I did the only thing I knew how to do. I ripped magic out of the air, dragging it into me until I felt incandescent. I held it as I reeled in more. I thought my skin would split. I kept drawing it in. I didn’t stop until I felt my mind clouding from lack of oxygen.

  I gripped Price’s trace and sent all the collected magic shooting along the ribbon in a blistering gob. I poured all I had into that fiery mass. I wasn’t sure what it would do to him. Not that I was thinking of that. Instinct and pri
mordial desperation had me. I didn’t know my name. I didn’t know where I was. All I knew was that I was going to die and I had to fight.

  Somewhere far away I felt the mass of magic hit him. I felt the predator surge inside him, focused, determined, and ruthless. He didn’t recognize me. What little reason I clung to cringed. He was coming for me. Ha. Like he didn’t already have me trapped.

  The pipe ahead ripped open. Metal screeched, and the steel around me shuddered with the force. It unzipped above me, exposing me to the storm above. Wind coiled around me and raised me upward, holding me upright above the ground.

  I could still feel the rush of emotion through Price’s trace. It’s an odd thing to be totally terrified of the man you love. I wondered if this was how abused women felt. But no. Price was no abuser. He had honor, and courage, and he loved me. He had protected me from his power, and he still was. Debris continued to whistle and spin around me, but it never hit. In fact, it seemed to be sifting out of the air, like it was too heavy to be raised.

  Once again, I marveled at Price’s control. By all rights, he should be dead right now. His magic should have shredded him. Yet he’d managed to harness it. How the hell had he suppressed this kind of power? What had they done to rip the lid off?

  Not that it mattered. I was dangling in midair with no way down and nowhere to go. The last thing I needed to worry about was how this had happened.

  Abruptly, the sound of the howling wind silenced. I hadn’t realized how loud it was until it was gone. All around me, chunks of stuff fell out of the air and thudded to the ground. A hail of broken junk. Hopefully no dead bodies. Or body parts. I remained fixed in the air. A spider pinned to a display. I swallowed. My throat felt chalky. My tongue was sandpaper. I tasted copper. I must have bitten myself.

  The tornado continued to rage beyond the clearing where I hung. A gray dust-bowl ghost appeared out of the settling dust. Price. The coveralls we’d found him were shredded and stained with blood. His own. Grime coated him like he’d been through a cloud of volcanic ash.

  His eyes were still white. I couldn’t tell if he was sane. I couldn’t read his expression through the mask of dust. He stopped a few feet away, looking up at me. He didn’t speak.

  “Mind setting me down?” I asked. Whispered. Between the fear constricting my throat and the dust I’d swallowed, my voice was toast.

  His expression didn’t change. Neither did he let me go.

  I drew a slow breath and let it out. “Price? Baby? Let me down,” I said gently.

  I didn’t go in for endearments as a rule. Price liked to call me baby, and even though I consider myself a powerful, independent woman, I totally ate it up. Made me go all hot and gushy inside, like one of those chocolate lava cakes. The only thing I ever called him was Price. I couldn’t remember ever even using his first name, much less a honey or a sweetheart or snookums. Calling him baby now was a risk. Seeing’s how he still might not believe I was me, it might just piss him off, and he’d whack me to a pulp on the ground.

  He stood stiff as a statue, his hands clenched at his sides. I struggled against my invisible bonds, but the best I could do was twist a bit and wriggle my fingers and toes. It’s a wonder I could move my jaw enough to talk.

  I considered trying to suck the magic out of my bonds, but Price still poured power into them. I could channel some of it into the two nulls tattooed on my skin, and maybe some of the trinkets I carried on me, but I doubted I had enough space to put it all. Once I started channeling, I couldn’t break the stream until the magic ran out. At least, I never had done that before. I had no idea when Price would run dry. Or if he’d stop on his own. I wasn’t all that sure he would stop. Or that he could. That was a scary fucking thought.

  On the other hand, he’d shown a lot of control. Maybe all he needed was motivation. I sure as hell couldn’t tell him how to turn off the spigot. It was supposed to be an instinct. Like breathing or blinking. He clearly had known how to turn himself off once, demonstrated by the fact that he’d shut himself down when his mother had taken him to South America for whatever exorcism she thought the priests could perform. Bitch. So Price had stopped himself once, which meant he ought to be able to stop himself again. He just had to remember how. All I had to do was give him a push in the right direction.

  As ideas went, the one I got was ninety percent brilliant, ten percent suicidal. Or maybe it was more ninety percent suicidal. Anyhow, it was an idea, and it could work.

  Or not. I decided not to think about that.

  I reached out to the magic cocooning me, and I pulled away a thread. Magic flowed into me, cool and hot at the same time. I channeled it down into Price’s trace, pushing it back out toward him.

  When it didn’t rebound back at me, I grabbed more magic, drawing as much as I could. I dumped it into his trace. He recoiled and backed away from me. I had his trace, though. He could go to Timbuktu, and I’d still be feeding him his magic. Now that I started, I couldn’t stop the loop. Only he could, by shutting down his magic.

  A blast of power sparked over my skin like a bee attack. I let out a yell. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Stop,” Price said, his black brows a solid bar above his white eyes. “What are you doing?”

  Well halle-fucking-lujah. I’d made him talk to me, if nothing else.

  “I can’t stop,” I said. “Not now that I’ve started. The ball’s in your court for that. We’re going stay on this merry-go-round until one or both of us burns up, or you put on the brakes. I’m voting for the second one.”

  His face worked, his mouth twisting as he raised his fists up and ground his knuckles against the side of his head. He uncurled his fingers and slid them through his hair, gripping and pulling. His entire face contorted, and his body tightened as if he hauled against a great weight.

  Nothing happened.

  He gave a gasp and stared at me. The edges of his eyes were rimmed red. With the white, he pretty much looked like a demon straight out of hell. “I can’t.”

  “Don’t give me that. You did before. When you were a kid. Plus you’ve been controlling it this entire time. Hell, you don’t even believe I’m really Riley, and you’ve been protecting me from your power this whole time. You’ve got this. You just have to do it.”

  Because Just Do It is the best advice of all time. Sort of like, don’t have that stroke, or just tell the bully to leave you alone, or better yet, tell the sun to set in the east for once. I tried for something more dire.

  “If you don’t reel it in, you’re going to die.” I didn’t point out that I would die, too. I wasn’t all that sure he wouldn’t think that was a benefit.

  “How?”

  I could see that asking cost him. I could feel it in the surge of hatred in his trace. Nope, he didn’t really trust me yet. Maybe he never would.

  I let the pain of the possibility wash over and through me and away. I couldn’t afford the distraction. “I don’t know. It should be instinct.”

  Price made a growling sound, and I couldn’t blame him. I was zero-for-two on the helpful advice front. I scrabbled to think of something actually useful. How did I shut down? I snorted at myself. When it came to channeling magic, I couldn’t. But was that true? Maybe I just hadn’t figured out how, same as Price.

  “Maybe this is all in my mind. A scenario to train me to use my power so you can use me.” His upper lip curled.

  “So now I’m not only not myself, I’m a figment of your imagination?” It was like a bottomless pit of uncertainty. I couldn’t win. As far as he knew, there would always be a chance his perceptions wouldn’t be real. That in reality he was still trapped in the cell and everything he was experiencing was nothing more than a dreamer fucking with his brain.

  “It’s more likely than Riley actually being here, don’t you think?” he rasped.

  “Mo
re likely than me showing up with my family, with Dalton, with Special Bitch Arnow, all of us trying to rescue you? Right. That doesn’t sound anything like me. I would never commit a risky assault on an FBI compound to rescue my boyfriend before the feds fucked with his head. Instead, I’d probably be—what? Hanging around at the diner? Or maybe sitting on the couch at your place, surfing the satellite for game shows until you were released? Maybe your brother and I would be out bowling and drinking piña coladas together. I swear, it’s like you don’t even know me. If the FBI really had invented this little movie for you, they’d have created a scenario starring Touray and a couple hundred of his militant minions. If your federal buddies included me at all, I’d probably be hanging out in the getaway van, delicately chewing my freshly polished nails while I waited nervously for you to be rescued. Or maybe I’d be wrapped in rope on a railroad track while the Evil Villains waited for you to come running. I sure as hell wouldn’t be crawling through a fucking underground tube or letting you strangle me.”

  He stared at me, his face blank. With his white eyes and the dust masking his features, I couldn’t read his expression. Finally he spoke. “You’re late.”

  Hope stabbed through my heart. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re late. To rescue me before the FBI fucked with my head.” He knocked his knuckles against his forehead.

  I licked my lips. “Does that mean you believe I’m really me?” I couldn’t read anything from his trace. His emotions were too confused.

  He ran the tip of his tongue around the ridge of his teeth. After what seemed like a week, he gave a sharp, decisive nod. “I do.”

  And as he spoke the words, a spike of uncertainty surged through his trace. He didn’t really believe. But he wanted to, so that was half the battle.