Shadow Redeemed

by Megan Blackwood

  "They're mortal," I shouted, bracing myself against the side of the van. Our three ghouls, dosed, lay napping at my feet, and I wanted to laugh from the irony of it all. I was no mage, despite my bloodline. It had been idiotic for me to think I could control such magics, even if they were born of the blood.

  "We have to fight our way out," Eleanor said in a soft enough voice that DeShawn couldn't hear. "There are too many."

  "Fight?" Seamus was on his feet, grasping a handle on the wall until his knuckles went white. "We can cure these people. Just one injection and they're back to normal!"

  "You want to explain that to them?" Julian asked, one eyebrow arched.

  I really thought Seamus was going to punch him, but he mastered himself and held up the roll of syringes. "If we get a few, they'll see we're just trying to help."

  "They'll see you stab one of them, who will promptly collapse due to the sedative," Julian said, not unkindly. "I don't like it either, but we're not getting out of here to cure more of them by trying to have a nice chat."

  "He's right," Eleanor said sadly. Her claws were already out, though I couldn't tell if it was from over-eagerness to fight or just the presence of so much nightwalker blood, even diluted in the ghoul bodies. "Unless you want to die here, we have to fight."

  "Mags?" Seamus looked at me with those glittering, terrified eyes, and it damn near broke my heart.

  He wanted me to fix this. Needed me to roll back the clock and undo everything—everything—that had led to this moment. But I could no more master that magic than I could the bounds of nightwalker blood. What was done was done. I almost laughed at the cruel thought that this was the sunstrider gift—the ability to live in the moment regardless of our age.

  Glass shattered. Crunched. DeShawn swore and turned the wipers on, spraying the ghouls reaching through the windscreen with cleaning fluid.

  A few would die, to get us out. Not a large number—nothing to tip the balance back toward the light. We'd planned this experiment for the start of night, when the ghouls might feel brave enough to take our bait. While the rise of Luna granted even her ghouls some strength, it would not be enough to stop me if I tore a path through them.

  With Julian and Eleanor at my side, we could be precise. Surgical. Carve away only what we needed to so that the van could break free. It wouldn't be fair to those who happened to be close enough to fall to our claws. But then, for all this world's careful balance of powers, I was beginning to think it had not an ounce of justice in it.

  Fair. I had riled them to attack. Thrown them into the wood chipper.

  I had no answer to give Seamus that he would find fair.

  "I'm so sorry," I whispered.

  His face fell, shoulders slumping. Julian and Eleanor tensed, prepared to follow me on the attack, anticipating violence.

  Maybe I could not leash the nightwalkers, but I could order those two young pups.

  "Stay," I said, and put command into my voice. They went rigid. "Defend."

  "Mags, what—"

  In my too-fast way, I touched Seamus's cheek, lightly, with human fingers. Then I flung myself out of the broken windscreen.

  Shattered safety glass washed over me, tangled in my hair, but was no threat in its rounded-off cubes. I rolled across the hood, twisted, landed on my feet in the center of a pile of ghouls that had scattered at my leap.

  For a long breath, the world went still. The ghouls watched me, wary, torn between fear of what I was—for even under the moonlight, my claws were sharp and my eye shined molten gold—but the rage won through, in the end. I knew it would.

  All that arguing, and nothing from the radio. Either the other vans had been overrun—which I doubted—or they weren't affected at all, because the ghouls had no interest at what hid within them.

  It wasn't the mortals they wanted. It wasn't even their three unconscious kin. It was me. The one who had tried to crush their wills beneath my heel. Seamus had been right, when he looked at me to fix this. But I didn't believe he would like the solution. They would follow me, with all their flesh-rending hatred, until their legs gave out or their master called them back to heel.

  Snarls broke the silence, screams of rage bursting through cracked mortal lips as the ghouls lunged for me in a great wave. They had no weapons but their hands, their teeth. It would have been laughable, if I had any intention of harming them. Now, those scratched and dirtied arms reaching for me, I thought only of what humanity was, at its core.

  It was easy to forget what a human was, when you yourself were so far removed from that life. But humanity had come down out of the trees long ago in its history, picked up the spear, and learned to run through the tall grass. Learned to hunt fiercer, stronger prey to exhaustion.

  I thought of myself as a predator. Those hungry eyes told me another story.

  Still, I was the fastest of my kind. Before they could reach me I sprung into the air, digging my claws into a nearby building to give myself something to leap off of. I didn't dare get too far—I needed them to follow me. Away from the van. Away from those I had, despite my lack of oath, sworn to protect.

  A strange feeling, to want to save without my blood screaming at me to do so. There was peace in that. Even if this horde ran me to my bones, I would die, at the very least, justified. This was fair.

  My friends didn't think so.

  "Mags, what the fuck are you doing?" DeShawn demanded through the earpiece.

  But he already knew the answer to that. I flung myself from wall to wall down the alley, gaining purchase on a narrow balcony more decorative than supportive. The ghouls turned en masse, following my every movement with fingers curled as if they could sprout claws.

  "Drawing fire," I said matter-of-factly. "Take advantage and get the fuck out. They'll follow me."

  Already they pressed against the building, clawing at the stone. Any moment they might very well form an ill-advised human pyramid to get to me.

  "They'll overwhelm you," he said.

  "They'll have to catch me first."

  "Mags!"

  I ripped the earpiece out and leapt into the sky. Night was falling, and London had seen enough strange things by now, so I made no effort to conceal myself in a dazzle of light. I wanted the ghouls to follow me. It wouldn't do to vanish mid-leap.

  The van started up. Distantly, I heard it rumble away, toward safety. DeShawn and Seamus might have had their complaints, but Julian and Eleanor would stick to their orders without question and force the matter. A needle of guilt prodded me, but I pushed it away. It was for the best. They'd all understand.

  The ghouls followed in a wave as I landed atop a light post, then leapt away again, keeping always to the high ground without ever letting myself out of their sight. Time lost all meaning as I pushed and pushed, scrambling always for purchase above the grasping hands, struggling to keep the snarling throng within the neighborhood of the high rise, where humans were sparse.

  But there were so very many. It's no simple thing to stay ahead of a riotous mass of humanity, but it became more and more complicated as that mass swelled. All those little grey licks of smoke bled out of the secret passageways of London, slinking from the shadows to join their kin in their blood-mad hunt for the being that had tried to abscond with their very minds.

  Foolish of me, to think I could control such a power. Though mortals would be quick to call my swift-healing and other talents magic, I had never wielded true magic. The Venefica's blood may have flowed through my mortal veins, but it did not carry its magic to me. While Roisin's family line granted her the ability to sniff such things out, I'd never been able to sense a current of power unless it was so very strong even ungifted mortals could sense it.

  What business had I, mucking around in the minds of my distant kin? Lack of oath had made me cocky, brash. Or maybe I had always been this way, and attributed my rashness to the whip of the oath.

  So many. I struck the side of a hotel and paused on a balcony, leaning one arm against the w
all. A swirling grey mass of faces stared up at me from the road, eerily still, knowing that my fly-by game could not last. Knowing that my muscles burned and my body felt heavier with every leap.

  Not even Luna's strength would keep me going, for I had been a thrice-damned fool and forgotten to feed. The realization struck like a hammer blow and I nearly doubled over with mad laughter.

  Not since before the party had blood passed my lips. I had used so much strength then, racing to Emeline, and later still when we battled against Lenora's elder children. Light take me, I'd left that estate so eager to be gone, so anxious to excise the security breech—myself—that I hadn't fed. And at DeShawn's... Well. There had been Lucien.

  I turned my arm over, peeled up the thin cocoon of my leather sleeve, and admired the faint pink dots of fang punctures lingering against my flesh. I had insisted he feed from me, for he had been starving. I was so low on immortal strength that those small wounds hadn't even healed.

  I considered pulling out my phone and calling the Sun Guard. They could bring me blood, sanctioned and given freely, but to do so would mean to wade through the rising tide of furious ghouls trailing my every move. The ghouls would do everything they could to stop such a mortal from getting through. They might not understand the details, but they would know the mortal brought me aid, and that would be enough. Even asking them to leave me a cache was too dangerous.

  Placing both hands on the balcony rail I leaned forward, letting my hair fall down around my face, trying and failing to count the numbers that clogged the streets. Their first furious burst of vengeance had faded, giving birth to something far more chilling. They waited, persistence predators that they were, because they knew, somehow, that I ran low on strength.

  I was the fastest of my kind. They should not be able to overrun me. And yet... Well, where had I believed this was going, anyway? Either Lenora called them off, or they ran me to ground. Just as I could see them all in my mind's eye, a miasma of grey smoke, I knew that they could see me—a single burning flame. Walls could not hide me. Perhaps Maeve's magic could, but she had not the information, nor the time, to suss out a solution.

  "Just you and me," I said to the waiting faces.

  Moonlight pooled across their eyes, giving them the illusion of being slicked with silver, and I shivered, gripping the railing harder. It would be better if they were nightwalkers. As mortals capable of being cured, I could no more raise my hand to destroy them as I could destroy Roisin, or any other of my kin.

  Not true. The oath did not hold me, and there were provisions for self-defense. And yet... I could not bring myself to fall to the slaughter. These people were enthralled through no real fault of their own.

  The sliding glass door behind me opened. I looked over my shoulder, half expecting a ghoul, but it was only an ordinary man. He tugged his bathrobe tighter against the night wind and pushed up a pair of wire-frame glasses.

  "You're on the wrong balcony," he said, in that mild way all English people had of understating the problem when they'd rather tell you to sod off.

  "I'm sorry to have awakened you," I said.

  "Yes. Well. That's quite all right..." He saw them, the sea of ghouls. His eyes widened to saucers and he took a step back, as if the fragile glass door could protect him from the hoard staring up at his balcony.

  "You needn't fear," I said, "they're here for me."

  He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. "Do you... Do you need the police?"

  I smiled at him, forgetting my fangs, but the smile at least was genuine. "Ah, it's a bit late for that, my friend. Shut your door. Go back to bed."

  "Get thee away from me, demon," he stammered, crossing himself. I wondered what movie or television show he'd picked up those words from.

  I stepped toward him, and he backed into the room, crossing himself repeatedly. Gently, I closed the sliding glass door. The lock clicked over.

  The ghouls were growing restless. They shuffled against each other, crowding close to the hotel's doors. If they broke and flooded the place, they'd no doubt harm many mortals on their scramble to reach me. I glanced to the moon, knowing the hour to be late, and cast the dice of fate.

  "Come on then," I called down to them. "You want to dance with me, you're going to have to earn it."

  Mist thickened the skies of London, dampening my body as I slung myself off the balcony and into the dew-heavy air. For a breath, I hung suspended in the sky, arms spread out, my back to the horde below and my gaze on the moon, reveling in my strength, keenly aware that this may be the last moment I could summon the full of my abilities.

  Show yourself, I thought at the moon, at Lenora, though such a summoning was ludicrous. She must know her ghouls had gone off-leash, frothing mad in a murderous rage. Either she watched, or ignored, the hunt that played out on the streets of London, and no amount of willpower on my part would change her mood, whatever it was.

  Gravity reclaimed me and I hurtled toward yet another roof, this one lower than the balcony. I landed on tiles slick with moss, but my footing was true as I sprinted across the gabled slope. I had a destination in mind, now. Closing time had long since come and gone. I knew where I would make my stand.

  A tile flew from beneath my boot and I swore, spending precious power to sink my claws into the ceiling and hold fast. Tumbling into those grasping hands wasn't the end I had in mind for myself.

  Buildings flashed passed as I leapt from roof to roof, circling the horde, drawing them into a tight, corralled knot that filled the streets below like a rising tide. The Thames stayed to my right, a dark chasm in the earth, as I angled my way toward a familiar steeple, and the expanse I knew waited beyond it.

  Sweat tinged pink with blood slicked my brow. Too much. I was drawing too much. Gritting my teeth against my own urgency, I slowed as I circled the square, picking out a likely spot for my next two jumps, for those two would matter the most.

  I hit St. Martin-in-the-Fields on all fours, scrambling to keep from sliding down into the wide streets and, before I could have a moment to second guess, lurched forward and flung myself at the massive roof of the National Gallery.

  Solar panels cracked under my feet, slippery with mist, and I swore as I scrabbled, seeking surer footing. I found firm stone beneath my feet by a massive dome at the front of the building. I'd never had the time to ask what type of art it housed.

  Every muscle in my body burned as I approached the edge of that stone roof, gazing down at the swarm of ghouls that rushed after me. I'd moved too quickly to follow, but they had my scent, and they flooded the great plaza in front of the gallery, filling the area edge-to-edge and spilling down the stairs, out toward the street.

  I could not count them. I didn't even try. I merely stood there and let the wind tear at me, thick with chilling fog, and waited for them to decide the best method to reach me. They had no claws, no supernatural strength, but under the force of their bloodlust, I had no doubt they'd bridge the gap of height between us. It was only a matter of time.

  Time enough for Maeve to learn what had happened and figure out a solution? Perhaps, but I doubted as much. My phone had been buzzing away in my pocket from the moment I left the alleyway. The Sun Guard was in a panic. No one was coming to my rescue, not tonight. I looked down upon the throng intent on tearing me to shreds, and peace rose within me.

  A tickle of violet perfume tinged the ceaseless winds.

  Thirty-four: One Way or Another

  Lenora came to the roof on a fell breeze, a swirling miasma of liquid silver and black ink uncurling on the stones behind me. I did not bother to turn, to look. I watched only the mortals that craved my death, and let her come about this in her own slow way.

  A shadow thrown by moonlight spilled at my feet, muscular and feminine, her hands not yet claws. Lenora clapped, each crack of her palms heavy enough to break stone.

  "Honestly, my dear, I never saw this on the horizon. I'm impressed."

  "Tell me, Lenora." I turned then, met her
steel gaze with my mismatched eyes. "Do you feel compelled to kill me?"

  Her forehead scrunched in confusion, but then she cocked her head to the side, considering. "Not a bit. How strange."

  I smiled at her, not bothering to spend the energy to retract my fangs. "Likewise."

  "And yet the ghouls would see your guts hung as streamers in Trafalgar square."

  "My fault," I said, not quite understanding my sudden craving for honesty. Maybe impending death is the sharpest of confessionals. "I tried to make them kneel to me."

  "Whatever for?"

  She approached me, but there was no threat in her movements, she simply wanted a closer look at the small army boiling at our doorstep.

  "We have a cure for ghouls. We meant to save them all."

  "I don't suppose it's airborne, is it?"

  "It is not."

  "You're well and truly fucked then."

  "Seems that way."

  "Stoicism in the face of certain doom. I suppose I should expect as much from a sunstrider, but I'm not sure that's what you are anymore. Are you, Magdalene? Are you certain?"

  "They rejected me," I said, and held out my arm to encompass the mass below. "There wasn't enough nightwalker in me to leash them."

  "Pah. I felt your fumbling. Your failure had nothing to do with the taste of your blood. You are a blunt instrument. No mind likes to be crushed, not even a ghoul's. Typical of a sunstrider. All you know is total loyalty. You've never learned a gentler touch."

  "I had to try."

  She faced me, hands on her hips, and I was struck once more by how petite she was. Despite the muscle that defined her shoulders, back, and arms, she stood a good foot beneath me, her silver eyes upturned to reveal a slim, oval face with a slight point to the chin.

  A velvet dress in mottled shades of purple wrapped her body, partially concealed beneath a black woolen coat. Though the dress was long, a slit ran up to the thigh, revealing black suede boots and the occasional flash of sand dollar-hued thigh. I'd seen her before, but looking upon her now, I found her strikingly beautiful.