Shadow Redeemed

by Megan Blackwood

  "I can do that," she said, nodding to herself, and hurried back to the estate, her heels sucking up the mud with every forced, staggering step.

  I followed Roisin into the house and left dripping trails of mud into the laboratory. The door stood open, Padhi's voice tight but precise as he gave DeShawn orders about arranging the equipment in expectation of our coming.

  He knew we'd come. He knew what we carried. And even so, upon sighting Emeline limp and dripping in Roisin's arms, the doctor had to grip the edge of a table to keep from losing his nerve. He rallied quickly.

  "Put her here." He pointed to a gurney that had been dragged out from the quarantine area, sitting in the center of the room like a dais. A protest pushed at my lips. Emeline, though she was our leader and loved the light, could not help herself any more than any other ghoul. She needed the chains and quarantine gates as much as the others. I held my tongue, though, when I saw the thick leather restraints he had already prepared.

  Roisin lay her down upon the bed. Rain water soaked through the sheets in an instant, so that it looked like she'd bled the skies of London into the sheets. Padhi swore and grabbed towels, peeling Emeline's sopping clothes from her limp arms while he chafed her to bring back the warmth.

  "Don't just stand there," he snapped. "Help me warm her. Ghoul or no, hypothermia hasn't ceased to exist, you immortal fools."

  Never let it be said that Roisin and I aren't quick to act when given a reasonable order. Chastised, we moved with all the grace and speed we were capable of to strip Emeline down and get her dried off, even going so far to replace the sheets with fresh ones that DeShawn spirited up from a pantry.

  When Emeline was dry and warm, thick blankets wrapped around her not only to keep the heat in, but to hide the restrains across her body, Roisin and I stepped back. Neither one of us needed to touch our commander to know that her pulse stuttered, weak and struggling.

  "She needs blood," Padhi said.

  Roisin and I exchanged a wary look.

  "Not like that." He rolled his eyes, exasperated. "I have a store of donor blood there, in the icebox, but not enough universal to make it count, I think. Do you know her type?"

  "Yes," I said, "let me smell them." Modern cataloging of such things was beyond me knowledge, but sunstriders had always been able to sniff out when two bloods were compatible.

  DeShawn yanked the door opened and started handing me bags while Padhi got a line started in Emeline's pale hand. The veins of her arms were too slack to accept a needle well. I pressed my nose near the valve of each bag and sniffed deep until I found one that matched Emeline's scent, if not her total character. DeShawn read the label—A+—then went digging for more of the same. I brought the first over, and Padhi snapped it from my hands and set the drip. He hesitated.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  Padhi stepped back from Emeline, voice soft. "She is stable, and she will wake soon."

  Understanding shook me. When Emeline's eyes opened once more, the mind behind them would not be entirely her own. She would rant and rave and scream for blood. Lenora had brought her so very close to a full change, that this ghoul curse would be stronger than the others.

  "DeShawn," I said gently.

  He looked up at me through bloodshot eyes, twin bags of blood in his hand, the door to the icebox propped against his hip.

  "Leave," I said.

  "Fat fucking chance of that," he growled, and went back to sorting.

  With every drop of blood flowing into her veins Emeline's sluggish heart quickened. Such a recovery would be impossible for a true mortal, I knew. If Lenora's blood had not passed her lips Emeline would be a long time in rousing, if she ever roused at all. This quickness, this burnished blush of life that rouged her cheeks and deepened her breath, brokered nothing good. Emeline would come up fighting.

  Roisin and I had seen such things, and though they pained us, we understood the mechanism. Empathized with the thrashing beast of bloodlust. The truth of it all would break DeShawn's heart, and we needed him now. Needed him angry and focused and, most of all, willing to push on. We needed that thin needle of human hope to stitch us a better future.

  With his back turned, I made careful eye contact with Padhi. A shock of understanding widened his eyes and he hesitated, fingers lingering over her rapidly increasing pulse. What I asked him to do in a glance, he would never attempt on a mortal in peril. But he had seen the ferocity, the tenacious clinging of ghouls to life, and as Emeline rocketed toward wakefulness, he decided it could do no harm.

  Quietly, turned so that DeShawn could not even by accident see what he was doing, Padhi hung another bag below Emeline's blood bag and connected it to her IV. Sedatives dribbled into her bloodstream along with fresh life, nudging her carefully away from wakefulness.

  "She's stable," Padhi announced, stepping back to strip the blue gloves from his hands and snap them into a trashcan. "I ask you all to leave, please. She will need rest, and I have a great deal of work to do."

  "But..." DeShawn stammered, and I honestly thought for a moment that he would weep, but his chin dimpled and he nodded, seeing her with the blush of life back in those marble-cold cheeks. "You call me if any the tiniest thing changes, all right?"

  Padhi nodded. "You have my word."

  "Doctor," I said softly. "A great deal has changed tonight. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mortals were made to drink wine mixed with nightwalker blood. Trace amounts, but I cannot even begin to guess at what will happen to them."

  Color drained from Padhi's face, blackening the circles under his eyes, and gripped the rail of Emeline's gurney, bracing himself against this knowledge. Though his distress was obvious, I could see the subtle churn of his mind as he thought through the possibilities.

  "I see," he said. "I understand it must be chaos out there, for this... thing... to have happened, but, if you can manage it, bring me one of those. I would see the effects from every angle, even one this small."

  "I'll bring you one with a bow on," Roisin said, and left the room.

  "I'll send coffee," I said to Padhi, then put a comforting arm on DeShawn's shoulder and lead him up the narrow stairs back into the warm light of the estate. If his hearing was sharp enough to hear the click of Padhi turning the lock behind us, he gave no sign.

  The others had gathered in the library, and we went to them, and I found it harder to meet those expectant stares than it had been to see that drop of blood fall.

  "She lives," I said, "but she remains a ghoul. Padhi is working on his cure still, and Roisin has gone to gather him supplies. Even if he cannot devise something new, we got to her early, and there is still the possibility of detox."

  I would not say, into those shocked and stricken faces, that I thought the chance of Emeline surviving detox very slim. For long moments, the only blood keeping her alive had been the magic of Lenora's.

  "What can we do?" Talia asked. She sat at one of the makeshift desks. Before she had noticed me her fingers had been flying like the wind across the keys of her laptop. Now, she was frozen and still.

  "Nothing save whatever Padhi asks of us." I slid my gaze to Maeve.

  She alone was standing, one hand against a column, a pensive look on her tired features. Seeing my glance, she threw up her arms.

  "I don't understand how she got through," Maeve said and sniffed. "There's no break, not even a crack in my wards. Seamus here, for all his raw strength, feels nothing untoward."

  Seamus sat alongside Talia with his own laptop. He frowned and felt at the air with his hands in the way I had seen Maeve teach him. His expression was thoroughly perplexed. "Don't ask me, I'm new to this. Is it like... software? Was there a backdoor? A Trojan?"

  "A what?" Maeve looked at him aghast.

  I didn't know a thing about software, but I knew the story of the Trojan horse well enough, and a creeping dread crawled up my spine. "It's me."

  They turned to look at me with mirrored, incredulous, expressions.

  "No
nsense," Maeve said.

  "You had to take the ward down to bring the ghouls through," I pressed, pointing to my single silver eye. "Did you make any allowances for me?"

  Maeve actually paled. "No. I didn't need to..."

  "Right," I said and laughed a small, bitter laugh. "And it was only after I spent the night here, thinking we were circling our wagons, that Lenora made it through to deliver her invitation. Once she'd confirmed she could make it through, she brought the others."

  Maeve narrowed her eyes. "Others? What, exactly, happened tonight? Tell me everything."

  And so I did. I told her of our desperate race, following the tug of Emeline's blood, and how we had known, somehow, when the gates were thrown that she would be in the garden. Maeve sniffed at that, marking it up to instinct, but stopped her muttering when I described what we found. How the bench was placed, where that heart had been, and the state of Emeline upon it.

  Seamus cursed softly in Irish. While I did not know the language, I'd heard Roisin use those words often enough. Talia placed a hand on his arm to silence him.

  "There were four others," I said, feeling Alec's gaze sharpen on me. The rest of the sunstriders patrolled the estate grounds—I could sense them like a phantom limb—but Alec had taken many wounds, and leaned into a leather couch, trying not to bleed.

  "Older than anything we've encountered yet. Not Lenora's age, not that old, but certainly of her make. Fifty years or so, it's difficult to say. But they were well trained, and of her blood, and we had no hint she hid anything else up her sleeve."

  "She brought elders with her, from her homeland," Alec said, scratching his narrow chin.

  "Yes. There is no other explanation. Whatever her reasons for leaving her home, it made no sense she would come alone. I hadn't had a chance to think on the point, but there we have it. She had a hive, and she brought it with her to claim London."

  Alec sighed. "That explains the resistance at the high rise."

  I raised my brows at him in question.

  "After you left," he elaborated, "some neophyte nightwalkers chased after the mortals. We couldn't very well leave them, so we pushed back. They weren't organized in any way, each acting independently, or in a small gang. I didn't think an elder like Lenora would leave such an unorganized force."

  "That aligns with what she told me. She thanked me for cleaning out her dissidents."

  Alec winced. "We had no choice. The shadows..."

  "I know. I know. It was the right thing. But those four elders were enough to stall Roisin and I long enough for Lenora to start her work. If it hadn't been..."

  I swallowed. "If it hadn't been for Lucien, Emeline would be a nightwalker right now."

  "What?" Maeve demanded, cheeks flaring red.

  Talia let out a small gasp and covered her mouth with her fingers.

  "Lucien Dubois broke through my wards?" Maeve's eyes rolled as she stared around the room, aghast. "It's not possible. One so old and strong as he... Lenora is one thing, but he would be like attempting to force a boulder through a sieve."

  It was Alec who asked, "He saved her?"

  "Yes. Lenora intended to turn Emeline. Lucien stopped her before she could give Emeline more than a single drop of blood. He fled before, well..."

  "Before more blows were had." Alec grimaced. "I confess to being jealous of the control of my elders. It wasn't more than ten seconds after sighting the nightwalkers at the high rise that the oath rode my mind. I could no more come to Emeline's aid than walk on the moon until those creatures were dead."

  "That is the usual way of things," I said wryly.

  "We owe a great debt to Mr. Dubois," Talia said.

  Everyone fell silent. I didn't dare twitch a muscle. Maeve continued to scowl at empty air as if it owed her answers. With her ability to see the magical currents of the world, maybe it did. Her eyes lit up, she clapped, and looked at me.

  "You can ask him. Ask him how he got through."

  "Maeve, it was me. It's this blasted eye of mine."

  "Piddle. I accounted for that. I'm sure of it."

  She had not, however, accounted for the breaking of my oath. I inclined my head to her regardless. "If I come across him, I will ask, but..." I shared a look with DeShawn, who shrugged. "The last time I asked something of him, he was not amenable."

  "Try, girl, try." Maeve fluttered a hand at me.

  I thought to tell them then. With Roisin gone, there would be no one with the strength to oppose whatever judgment the truth brought upon me. It is me, a voice inside cried out, it is not the eye, but the lack of oath.

  My death existed in those words, final and irrevocable, for a sunstrider without their oath was no sunstrider at all, and such a thing as a vampire without the leash of the day was a monster worthy only of death.

  "Humor me," I said instead, "and let me rest outside this house tonight. I would feel better."

  "Our numbers..." Alec trailed off.

  "Roisin will be back, and I do not think Lenora will try again tonight. The sun is near to rising."

  At the thought of that blessed light, a contented smile washed over Alec, and I ached for the simplicity of knowing you belonged beneath the light's powerful kiss.

  "You can stay at my place again," DeShawn said. "And bring some cat food back with you once you're done resting. Mr. Pips is getting too bloody accustomed to chicken from the kitchens."

  "I don't like the idea of you alone," Talia said, and I almost wept from the kindness of her.

  "It will be all right," I said, and gave her my fanged smile. "I am the most dangerous creature abroad this night."

  Thirty: The Balance

  What I looked like to DeShawn's neighbors, who had always watched me warily through their peepholes, as I approached that door and formed my claw into a key, I cannot say. I dripped blood and muck across the stiff carpet of the common hall, leaving a puddle behind in the lift. The Sun Guard would offer reimbursement for cleaning. What was left of my dress, the gown Talia had picked with something of that old spark back in her eye, hung in tattered rags from my hips and shoulders, revealing quick-healing gashes left by nightwalker claws.

  There is something profoundly hollow in a house hastily abandoned by its owner. Though DeShawn had only been two days gone, the air had the stale quality of disuse, a fine veneer of London's dust nestling into the crevices of a life abandoned. Scraps of food lingered in Mr. Pips's bowl, and for a breath I expected that demanding creature to let out a howl for more. But no, he was safe at the estate, growing fat on chicken. A bare space on the bookcase marked the place where his copy of Jurassic Park had been.

  DeShawn would be back, and this world set to right. This melancholy seeping into my bones was my own, an old friend come home to visit. I sat on the couch, not bothering to lock the door behind me, and buried my face in my hands, tensing my fingers against my skull until they left small, stinging points of pain.

  I could crush my own skull. Such things were not beyond my strength, though I didn't know how the survival instinct in my blood would react should I make the attempt. I pressed harder, almost gasping from the pressure, savoring the feel of my mind distracted, skirting that edge of self-destruction. Maybe this was what it was like for Lucien, lingering in his penance of starvation. Maybe he did it not to suffer, but only to feel.

  The door opened, and he was there.

  I sensed him. There was no need to peel my hands from my eyes to confirm the nature of that sun-sweet hay scent, that lodestone of darkness weighing down my heart. The door shut, and he neither moved nor spoke, his black gaze settling on my tensed shape with all the patience of an immortal.

  How long it was before I looked up, I do not know, but the pain lost its novelty and my head lifted, and while I knew my face to be streaked with blood and ash he, light take him, was an immaculate thing.

  He shouldn't be. For his star-speared black eyes, the grave pallor, and the scent of his blood alone I should despise him, revolted to my core, but even
when the leash of the oath had me well in hand, I could not bring myself to such loathing. And now, that collar severed, despite the monster in him all I saw was my Lucien. I wondered if it had been the same for him, when he had been mortal and me among the Sun Guard. We had never spoken of it then, though I'd occasionally see his body tense of its own accord, sensing the predator in me, when I moved too quickly.

  "Are you all right?" His was the voice of a drowning man. Soft and distant, smothered by the churn of the sea, and I thought of how he'd come to be remade, Ragnar's child, bleeding his last on a distant shore. But this was not that old hurt. This was a new stifling, born of his self-flagellation, his hunger. Lucien Dubois faded from the world, by his own will.

  "There is a nightwalker on my doorstep while Luna hangs full in the sky," I said carefully, not daring to twitch a muscle. "You tell me."

  His head tilted, black waves caressing the sharp line of his jaw. For all he had been, he was a predator now, and he knew my meaning, and considered it with deep care. After a moment that would feel too long for anyone not as ancient as we, his eyes widened.

  "I feel no desire to destroy you," he said with wonder and touched, lightly, his temple with two fingertips. "Is it me? Before, even with your silver eye, there had been some pain in resisting. I thought, when you came to me by the Thames, that it was only because the sun rode high that I felt no compulsion to attack you."

  My laugh was soft and bitter. "Think, Lucien, if you have the strength left to do it. You and Roisin were quick to want to rip one another's throats out."

  He frowned. "I hated that."

  "I daresay she didn't enjoy it either."

  "Your eye..."

  "It's not that," I said, and let my hands dangle between my knees, head bowed. "I was captured, once, while I had my nose in the air looking for you. Captured and tried for the color of my eye."

  He started forward, an aborted step, hand outstretched, a snarl of vengeance on his pale face. I almost laughed then, to see Lucien Dubois, my sweet mortal love, driven to my defense. But it would have hurt him to laugh, and I no longer knew which one of us was the stronger.