Shadow Redeemed

by Megan Blackwood

  "In fact, you did not," she said, pursing her lips. "Without the oath, you don't have to do a single thing the guard orders, do you?"

  I pointed over her shoulder to the ghouls below. "I don't need an oath to tell me this is wrong. Hundreds, Lenora. Perhaps thousands drank your sun-cursed punch. Why?"

  "Honestly?" Her smile twisted. "To see if it would work. I've never had an army before. It's quite fun."

  "Those people will wither and starve and never know why. That's fun?"

  Her eyes narrowed. "They'd wish the same upon us, if they knew what we were."

  "Sunstriders—"

  "They make no distinction!" She threw one hand up and sighed. "That is what you pig-headed mortal lovers never quite got around to understanding. While you cuddle your sacred oath and hunt us into the night, humanity does not discern a difference between us. Your guard puts up a pretty show of being your ally, but what did they do when they believed there were no nightwalkers left to fight, hmm? They put you in the ground. All of you! You're nothing more than weapons, triggers for them to pull. Break-glass-in-case-of-emergency. Tell me." She leaned closer. "How deep ran their horror when they believed their leader lost to the night?"

  I punched her straight in that perfect little chin. Her head jerked back and a spray of blood exploded from a split lip, but her body did not move. She leveled her head, slowly, and rubbed at her jaw, the bones clicking, a curious light in her eyes.

  "Interesting."

  "You'll take care not to speak of Lady Emeline."

  She held her arms out to the side and spread her hands in contrition. "Very well, though it afforded me a chance to see your Lucien again."

  She waited, expression unmoving, for me to react. But I had seen Lucien later that night, and knew him to be well and far away from any of her machinations. "You fear him."

  She brought her hands back to her hips. "What makes you say that?"

  "He is your elder, and can strip all of... this..." I gestured disgustedly to the horde below, perfectly still in their thrall to Lenora, waiting for her orders. "... from you in a breath, if he so chose, and you don't have the slightest clue what he desires. If he were to come for you, your numbers would not matter, and your strength is not enough."

  She chuckled and licked blood from her chin. "It's true. Ragnar's child can best me, I'm not so proud as to pretend otherwise. But I do know what he's up to, little Magdalene. Busy brooding his black heart out while the blood wastes from his veins. He struck me, that night in your garden. There was no hiding the scent of his slow decay from me."

  "Then why are you fishing for information about him?"

  Her eyes brightened and she hmmed to herself, turning around to face the ghouls. "I like you without the oath. It makes you slower to act, makes you cleverer. And a clever girl knows when she's outmatched."

  Lenora looked at me over her shoulder, sheets of black hair falling across her cheek to smear the blood that dripped from her chin. "I can send them all away."

  "I won't pay the price you ask."

  "Pah. You make friendship sound so dreadful. Such dramatics are unseemly in our kind."

  "Friendship? Do not offer me friendship when what you ask is a refusal of everything I believe."

  She seized on that. "And what is it you believe, Magdalene Shelley?"

  The oath would have lent me ready words, but I pursed my lips, digging deep. What I said next needed to matter, needed to be true, for while I didn't care what Lenora thought of me, I wanted these words of belief, the first spoken since losing my oath, to ring true for my own ears. If I were going to die on this roof, it wouldn't be for a lie or, worst of all, uncertainty.

  I looked down upon that horde of enthralled mortals, wondering what they believed—if they could believe anything at all while the bloodlust rode their veins—and if they would go back to those beliefs when the red mist cleared from their eyes and Padhi scoured Lenora's poison from their veins.

  Fragile, all of them, though in their numbers they could rend me to shreds. I'd always known, academically, that mortals were delicate things compared to us vampires, but the reality so rarely came home to me.

  It had been Lucien who'd shown me, when he was attacked in that high mountain pass. But it had not been his fragility that moved me. It had been that, despite everything—the death of his traveling companions, the blood icing across the snow, knowing he'd be next to fall—he stood, quaking in his boots, and prepared to make his last moments cost dearly.

  That was when I had learned to love mortals, beyond the calling of my oath. That was when I knew that my strength—all the strength of all vampires combined—was nothing without that weakness, that fragility.

  The world turned, the seasons came to pass indifferent to mortal woes, but humanity clung on. Carved a place for themselves. Lifted their faces to an indifferent heaven and made their challenge: I will understand you.

  And what were we? Static things, old ice growing deep on the poles of a world that did not belong to us.

  "I believe this world is made for mortality. You and your kind, Lenora, whether compelled by some oath I know not of, or your own wills, have placed yourselves against the mortal tide. We are but rotting pillars beneath the waves, vestiges set to erode under the abrasion of their constant progress. This world is not ours, and you would take it from its rightful heirs. That will not stand."

  Her head rocked back, a real frown distorting her otherwise amused mien. "We were mortal once, you and I. Do you reject yourself so soundly?"

  "We already did, when we let our sires' blood pass our lips."

  She sighed gently. "You are right about one thing, Magdalene. We are old, rotting pillars that the tide of humanity rushes against, wearing us away. Only I wish to preserve us, while you would rather see us lost to the muck. Quite honestly, to let these ghouls tear you apart goes against everything I believe. While you would see me destroyed, I would see you saved. Exalted, even, as one of the eldest of our kind."

  "So long as you wish to rule humanity, Lenora, I will come to tear out your heart."

  She turned, tapping one foot. "I am not fond of watching the shadows for threats."

  Long, shining daggers dropped into her hands from the drape of her coat sleeves. She held them loosely in that reverse grip, watching her horde and tapping that foot in irritation. Silently, I drew my mortuary blade.

  "You wish to kill me, then?" she said, catching sight of the steel in my hands. "Very well. I will grant you that chance. No ghouls. No neophytes. No tricks. But if you fail, and I best you, then you will bend knee to me. Do we have a deal?"

  "Yes," I said, though I didn't think either of us believed I would bend my knee to her if I lost.

  Maybe she thought she could convince me, when the time came. Maybe she believed that my life was as precious to myself as her own was to her. I don't know. But I accepted those terms, knowing I lied, and when she turned to meet me, steel flashing, I already had my blade out to guard.

  A fierce grin split her face, real joy radiating from every line of her body. Everything before this had been games, feints. I had not even seen her draw steel until this moment. The two long daggers in her hands bore wicked tips, swooped up in a subtle, curving design that I'd never seen before. There was so very much of this world I did not know.

  Any other night, and besting Lenora Faviola blade to blade would not be trivial, but it would be doable. Tonight, I used every ounce of willpower I had not to show her my muscles trembling as she pressed the edges of her blades into mine, drawing her face so close her breath gusted against my cheek.

  "I'm going to enjoy this," she said.

  And then all that was said was the song of steel.

  Thirty-five: Luna's Metal

  I let her press the attack. My entire unlife until this moment had been spent in a constant forward charge, forever chasing down the next task, the next goal, to set the world to rights. Now, without the oath lashing me to action, I was given the luxury of biding
my time.

  It had been a very long time since I had been free to watch the way my opponent moved, had marked and cataloged every weakness, every over-eager thrust. Lenora pushed me back across the roof, step by slow step, and I let her do it, marveling that I had any choice at all, feeling the words of my tutors reach for me across the years.

  I had learned the blade as a sunstrider, and we were taught the singular method of a full offense. Luxurious, now, to linger in defense, checking my strength, saving what little I had left for the moment when she would lag, her assault giving way to some crack, some advantage I could press. The ability to wait, to save my strength, was the only thing keeping me alive.

  My back leg touched the rows of slippery solar panels. I hesitated, recalling the strength I had to spend to cross that dew-slick roof. Lenora's knife dipped in, scoring a line across my sleeve, opening flesh and leather. Blood dripped down my forearm, dribbled over my wrist and made my grip slick.

  To heal the wound would spend power, to let the blood flow free would drain my strength even more. I extended a sliver of strength as I switched my grip to guard, but nothing happened. The flesh there would not heal.

  "Ah, the old tricks still work, if not entirely. Does it burn, Magdalene? Does it poison you as it should? Or is there only numbness there?"

  Lenora danced out of my range and laughed. She wiped the bloodied blade against her coat and held it up to glint in the light. Silver had been folded into the steel, making pale, tree-trunk patterns akin to damask. The whole blade had been polished to such a high shine that the distinction was difficult to see.

  Pride. Pride would make her vulnerable.

  My answer was a darting strike, sloppy but powerful, for the shoulder of the arm holding the blade to the light. Wool parted beneath my blade and I struck flesh, bounced off of bone. Lenora shrieked and darted backwards, resuming her guard, and I dared to draw on a sliver of power to rush in faster than she could follow, opening a long line across her hip while her weapons were still up to guard her chest, her heart.

  Her expression set in stone, showing no pain, and her blades lashed down to tangle mine and bring us toe-to-toe, locked tight, both dripping too-dark blood across the damp tiles.

  "And how does gold feel?" I asked.

  Her muscles strained, silver eyes flashing as she drew strength to heal, to push back the sting of my sacred metal, and found her power not enough to ease the ache.

  "Luna's strength will cleanse your poison. What have you to clean your blood, Shelley? What gives you strength?"

  Her pupils constricted, crowded out by expanding silver. A shuddering, hissing breath passed through her teeth and she shoved at our blades, throwing me backwards, the strength coursing through her veins impossible with the wounds she bore. How old was she? What had the book said of her? Something about stone, maybe. Light, but I had not paid enough attention.

  The clouds above parted, spilling silver light across her face, her collarbone, and in that moment she appeared lit from within. The wound in her shoulder knit. Her thigh sealed itself shut. Her plush lips twisted in a half-smile, her cheeks bright with strength.

  "You fade," she said, advancing. I backed up a step. "Because you lack faith. Poor lost Magdalene, torn between two bodies of the sky. They're not beings, you know. My Luna is rock and dust, your sun a torment of flame. They do not think. They cannot think. To take from them is to open yourself, make your body a conduit. That is what Ragnar never understood. It wasn't that the powers of day were denied him, it was that he was a vessel of another faith. He took from the moon and crowded out space for the light. But you, my dear, are split in two. You narrow the power that can be given you, and it makes you weaker, not stronger."

  She admired the edges of her blades. I could strike. The urge clawed within me. She was distracted, reveling in her own perceived superiority. This was the moment to cut her down to size. But a light tickled my consciousness, a hint of a presence I knew well drawing near. Not a burning flame of a mind like the young ones, but something separate from me. Ancient and entirely its own.

  A flash of red appeared through the mist behind Lenora's shoulder. I backed another step, pretending to baby my arm, not hard to fake. The damn thing was numb, just as Lenora claimed. So cold it ached to the bone.

  "You argued with him about our creators?"

  To call those tidal forces our creators felt like a lie to me, but I didn't owe this woman my suspicions.

  "For centuries. We nightwalkers do not shun knowledge of what we are, we crave every tiny secret hidden in our blood. We seek the keys to our strength. Ah, how I wanted Ragnar's research to be correct rather than my own. A pretty fiction, that we could wield both powers with equal ferocity if only we balanced our natures back to what we were before the split. And in the end, he lacked faith, and he died by your divided blade. Pity he's ash. I would have liked to demonstrate to him how wrong he was."

  "Lenora," I whispered, so that she would have to focus to hear me. "I don't think any of us understand what we are, let alone what I am."

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "What do you know?"

  I wiped the blood on my hands off on the thigh of my jeans and readjusted my grip. "Before she died, my sire's eyes were hazel."

  Lenora sucked air through her teeth, whistling it against her fangs, and a war of questions washed across her moon-round face. "You saw Claudette's eyes turn to hazel at the end? He never said—"

  She spun. Silver and steel flashed from her fingers, carving an arc of light through the mist. A crack sounded, accompanied by the brimstone scent of gunpowder. Lenora jerked, body folding forward as Roisin's gold-laced bullet tore through her chest on the side opposite her heart. It ripped through her coat, painted a blossom of red petals across that dark wool, spreading steadily, the peppering of gold embedded in her body too much for even her faith in Luna to restore.

  Lenora hissed and reared back, claws at last descending from her fingers, and I knew why the hilts of her daggers were so long, as those claws fitted to the grip perfectly. She set up for another throw.

  I sprung, making the jump messy and loud to draw her attention. Riding rage, Lenora whirled, coat fanning out wide so I couldn't see behind her. She lunged at me, ignoring the bite of my blade as it scored across her stomach. The collision drove me to my back, knocked the blade out of my hand.

  My head smacked against the stone and I saw stars, then Lenora's pale and rage-twisted face hovering above me, fangs extended as she snarled and drew back her arm to strike a killing blow to my heart with her remaining dagger.

  Blood poured from her chest, making my grip slick as I reached up with my claws, grabbing her wrist to stop its point before my chest. The tip pierced skin, and while I was certain the wound bled, my own blood was lost beneath the deluge pouring from Lenora. She must have fed well before coming here.

  A flash of lucidity crossed her expression, wiping away the bestial snarl. Her eyes welled, silver tears stained pink tracking down her moon-round cheeks.

  "Why won't you embrace what you are? Why won't you help me make our people safe?"

  The blade eased back, the numb press of its silver-tainted tip pulling out of my flesh.

  A halo of red hair flashed above Lenora's head, my friend's face obscured by the nightwalker's. A bright line of blood carved across Lenora's throat, her final smile, and she went perfectly still, eyes upturned to her mistress Luna.

  Her flesh peeled, cracks forming in the supple skin, and all she was transmuted to ash.

  "Took you long enough," I grated out.

  Roisin laughed roughly, then spat a wad of dark blood on the roof. The blade in her hand was a saber chased in gold, the upward lick of its tip inlaid with an elaborate sunburst pattern. It had been her weapon of choice, before the invention of firearms, and seeing her with it now jarred me with memories of the three of us—Roisin and Sebastian and I—in the time before I had known. The memories stung with longing.

  "You didn't make
yourself hard to find, but Maeve had to work up a cantrip to get me past the horde."

  Roisin dropped to one knee. I scrambled to my knees, crawling to her, and pushed away the brown leather jacket that hide her body. The long hilt of Lenora's dagger stuck from her chest, dangerously close to her heart. Blood poured out around the wound, sluicing down her shirt to pool at her knees. She slammed the tip of her blade into the roof and leaned on it, a trickle of blood rolling down from the corner of her lips.

  "I knew she was fast." She paused to spit blood. "But I had to make that shot count."

  "They're silver," I said stupidly, fumbling to strip her jacket away.

  "No shit. The burning told me as much." Roisin pointed her chin at my forearm. "Got you, too."

  "It's not so bad for me."

  "Maybe don't tell Julian that."

  I laughed bitterly and tore her shirt to better see the placement of the wound. If she were a mortal, this would be a killing blow. As it was, the silver was doing its poisonous work, blackening the flesh around her wound, while too much blood fell freely around the opening. Moving had jostled it enough that the blade no longer formed a seal.

  "You've got to get it out," I said, "before the silver does more damage."

  She raised both eyebrows at me. "My hands are shaking. You have to do it."

  We stared at one another. The slightest touch of that light-cursed silver against her heart would render her to ash. Roisin knew the place of her heart better than I. It should be her to pull the blade, but she did not lie. Her clawed hands trembled, her face twisted in stinging agony. The punishment of Luna's metal.

  The ghouls began to howl. The sound pricked at my skin, made me tense with the predatory urge to hunt that which hunted me. Lenora's leash. She'd held them all in check while we battled, and now that she was gone the ghouls were enraged not only by my attempt to cow them, but by the loss of their mistress.

  A thumping began below. I dared not leave Roisin's side to see, but the pounding grew and grew until it consumed my senses. They were throwing themselves at the building, scrabbling, climbing over one another, shredding human fingers as they sought to scale the face of the gallery.