Shadow Fall

by Glass, Seressia

  “Any particular type of hybrid?” she asked.

  Jessen shook his head. “Bale says there is no discernible pattern that he can find. He bids me tell you that he will arrange interviews with family members for you, if you wish to contact him.”

  “Oh, I definitely wish to contact him.” A minor surge of relief hit her bloodstream. Humans and hybrids attacked across the board. Something or someone, perhaps another Fallen, behind the mysterious events. Not her.

  “Jessen.” She waited until the banaranjan looked at her. “I need the names of every comatose patient brought here in the last eight days. Can you do that for me?”

  He dipped his head. “Bale told me that I would need to.” He dug into his breast pocket, extracted a folded sheet of paper. “The names of the others we know of are there as well.”

  “My thanks to you, Jessen,” Kira said formally. “You have shown bravery this day.”

  The young man beamed, straightening his shoulders with pride. “My thanks to you, Chaser Solomon.”

  A movement of air, and the squick of sneakers against tile announced Zoo’s return. He appeared composed, his earlier antagonism gone. A black nylon cord dangled from his bare knuckles. “Will this do?”

  Kira looked at the pendant, three stones wrapped with silver wire: black tourmaline, obsidian, and a bit of rose quartz. One stone for dispelling magical attacks, one for banishing negative energy, and the rose quartz symbolizing the soft glow of confident love.

  “It should work fine,” she told him, wondering how much of his anger she would have to peel back to get to impressions of Wynne. On top of that, she wondered if the witch had added any extra magical surprises to hurt her. She wouldn’t have thought Zoo capable of anything so nasty, but that was before Zoo had accused her of deliberately harming her best friend.

  Only one way to find out. She held out her left hand, securely gloved and palm up, for Zoo to drop the pendant into. “Thank you, Zoo.”

  “Okay.” He scrubbed a hand over his head again. “Umm, you might want to be careful when you touch it. It packs a nasty punch if it’s triggered.”

  “Now you want to be considerate?” Khefar hadn’t let go of his anger. “Did you know that Wynne’s not the only one this has happened to, witch? There are others on this floor experiencing the same symptoms. There are even hybrid victims.”

  Zoo flushed. “I’m sorry—”

  “Save it, both of you.” Kira turned to Jessen. “I need to do a reading, and I don’t have time to go home. Is there someplace private on this floor that I can use for a little while?”

  “There’s a consultation room down the hall,” Jessen said, his eyes wide. Great, just what she needed—the banaranjan reporting back to Bale about the scene he’d witnessed. It wouldn’t be long before the entire hybrid community found out.

  “Thanks. Zoo, go back to your wife. Hopefully I’ll have something worth sharing when Sanchez arrives.”

  Zoo nodded curtly, then left. The air pressure lightened perceptibly. “Where’s the room, Jessen?”

  The orderly led them down a short hallway to a tastefully muted room decorated in professional grays and teal yet with a touch of coral for warmth. “Will this work?”

  “Yes, Jessen. Thanks to you.”

  The banaranjan left. Kira sat behind the desk, bracing her elbows against the flat surface. Khefar took the chair opposite. “Can you do this?”

  “It’s my job. If there’s a clue or a replay of how Wynne got dropped, I need to find it. I have to help her and the others. Besides, the thing with Zoo—something like this was bound to happen eventually. I don’t mean getting labeled as a suspect by my best friend’s husband, but still …”

  She shook her head. “Maybe I should be alone for this.”

  “No.” He planted his feet then planted his elbows down on the desk, mirroring her position. “You’re still tired from cataloguing that Persian knife. I don’t know what’s going to happen when you start reading that necklace, and neither do you. I’m staying.”

  She looked up and saw his expression, the one that told her it was useless to disagree. Even if she’d managed to win the argument and convince him to give her privacy, he’d come back as soon as she pushed through the Veil.

  “All right.”

  He blinked in surprise. “You’re not going to argue?”

  “I know better.” She held out her right hand. “Will you do the honors?”

  He tugged off her glove, his expression grave. It was the appropriate attitude, seeing as he’d witnessed the death of a friendship.

  She held the pendant aloft in her gloved left hand. It swung slightly on its braided cord. She had no idea what sort of hit she’d get from the amulet. Stones had their own properties, and the ones Zoo had chosen—obsidian, black tourmaline, and rose quartz—had their own associated powers. Zoo had combined them into a protection amulet, and though it hadn’t protected Wynne from whatever had made her comatose, it was sure to resist Kira’s attempts to push through its barrier. She was pretty sure it would also wallop her with the force of Zoo’s anger.

  It would have to be borne, however. She needed to know what had happened to Wynne, determine who or what was responsible. Maybe it was something physiological, and she could pass word to Jessen to give to Wynne’s doctors. If something supernatural proved to be at the root of Wynne’s sudden malady, Kira would hunt it down and make it save her friend.

  An enemy. She needed an enemy, one that didn’t live inside her.

  Conscious of Khefar sitting across from her, Kira relaxed her body muscle by muscle, in time to her slow, rhythmic breathing. Her extrasense welled inside her, bubbling up like a magical spring. Ma’at be with me, Ma’at guide me, Ma’at protect me, she silently prayed, reaching for the peace that communing with the goddess always gave her.

  The calmness rose up through her extrasense like an obelisk, strong, immovable. Only then did she allow her extrasense to seep up through her pores, assume command of her mundane senses, and push back the Veil of reality.

  The office shimmered in curtains of blue and gold slipping against each other in slices of green, further proof of Light and Shadow living inside her, Shadow encroaching. She saw Khefar across the desk, a shell of black, completely devoid of magic. Not with the rainbow aura all humans had, but a solid dark mass as if he was permanently locked in his root chakra. She wondered if it was because he required some sort of super-grounding in order to use the dagger, or because he’d died multiple times.

  The hospital hummed with the magic of technology, registering to her senses in a deep, life-affirming red. She caught a flash of yellow-green, realized it was outside the room. Probably the banaranjan, hoping to gather more information to pass on to Bale. A little quid pro quo was fair, as long as they didn’t interfere with her Chase.

  Her gaze swung to the amulet dangling from her hand. The protective aura was like a mace, a solid ball of black granite. Spikes seemed to be protruding from it, a warning layer of defense. Encircling it, like the corona of the sun visible during an eclipse, was red-orange light.

  “Looks like Zoo was really mad,” she murmured, her voice sounding far away to her ears. She didn’t like to talk much when she pushed beyond the Veil, not wanting anything to pull her back into reality.

  “Be careful,” Khefar ordered, his voice muffled on the other side of the Veil.

  Of course she’d be careful, but she appreciated the sentiment. At least he wasn’t trying to convince her not to read the pendant. Shutting out the mundane world, she pulled her extrasense about her like armor, and then wrapped her bare hand around the pendant.

  It was like sticking her hand into lava. Rage boiled over her, melting her defenses, sinking into her aura. Images and sounds burned their way into her mind, branding her psyche.

  “I’m telling you, she’s changed!” Zoo’s voice. “I don’t think we can trust her anymore!”

  “She’s my friend!” Wynne’s voice, catching. “She needs us!�
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  “And we need to protect ourselves. What if she flips out again? If she blasts you like she did me—”

  “She wouldn’t do that, not on purpose.”

  “I swear by the Great Lady, if she ever hurts you, I’m going after her.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “I mean it, Wynne! I know she’s your friend, but I also know she’s dangerous. I’m gonna give you something for protection. Don’t ever take it off. And don’t ever turn your back on her.”

  Red walls of flaming anger scorched her, charred her awareness. Let it burn, she thought. Let it burn out until there’s nothing left.

  A black form entered the conflagration, a hand extended to her. “Kira. Pull back for a moment. Take a breather.”

  She let Khefar pull her back to reality the way a lifeguard tows an incapacitated swimmer to shore. She found herself back in the room, the pendant clutched in her fist. Khefar leaned over her, trying to pry her fingers open. He succeeded, and the amulet fell to the desk’s surface.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice hoarse. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re shaking,” he told her, his voice squeezed bare. “You were making a sound like—a sound I wish never to hear from you again. And there is moisture on your cheeks.”

  Kira removed the wire rims and wiped her hand across her face. At least he’d had the decency not to accuse her of crying.

  “It was a wall of anger,” she said after wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. “More anger than I expected. And he thinks I’m a danger to him and Wynne. I don’t know how long ago that was, sometime after the cemetery incident, probably after we returned from Egypt, and definitely before we met them for lunch. This pendant is to protect Wynne from me as well as anything else with Shadow magic.”

  Khefar cursed. “That damn witch.”

  “Finding out what someone really thinks of you reeks,” she said, wishing she had some aspirin for her pounding head. “Sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t try to read it further,” he suggested. “Surely Gilead has psychics with this ability.”

  “They do, but not as directed.” Already drained, she pushed her braids back over her shoulder. Fighting to keep Zoo’s anger from completely shattering her defenses had taken a lot of energy. “It takes years of study to reach the level of being able to sift through memories and along a timeline at will. I don’t know if Sanchez has anyone with the experience in Gilead East, and we don’t have time to bring someone else in.”

  “Okay.” He returned to his chair. “Find whatever you need to find, and make it quick. I don’t want you connected to this thing longer than you need to be.”

  She picked up the pendant again. This time the protective aura didn’t block her. She breathed deep, allowing her extrasense to take control of her mundane senses. The inherent magic of the stones rose in front of her, allowing her to see the protective crystalline matrix. She pushed through the jeweled forest, pushing aside branches until she finally emerged on the other side.

  Images blurred by her again like speeding cars on a highway. She tried to find the ones she needed, moving back through the darkness that marked the onset of Wynne’s coma. Keeping her emotions firmly locked down, Kira sifted through the pendant’s point of view, looking for something, anything, out of the ordinary.

  There. Images she had seen before, but not together. Wynne standing in the Hall of Judgment. Kira’s heart pounded with sudden wild fear. Wynne didn’t worship the Egyptian pantheon; as far as Kira knew, her friend hadn’t made any decision about her faith.

  Wynne held up a bright yellow crystal, and Kira realized Wynne was standing in the reproduced scene inside the museum exhibit, not the hallowed hall she and Khefar had encountered. Wynne dropped the citrine heart scarab onto the empty measuring pan opposite the gleaming white Feather of Truth. She watched in anticipation as the scales swung up and down. Heart thumping as the scales stopped; Ma’at’s feather was lighter than the jewel.

  The Ammit statue lunged out of the darkness, jaws snapping, eyes gleaming bright bloodred. Wynne shrieked, her fright subsiding into a nervous laugh. It wasn’t real, after all. It was only a show.

  But the gemstone amulet had recognized that the citrine scarab, the traditional Egyptian representation of the soul, was gone, taken by Ammit.

  The Ammit figure had somehow taken on the characteristics of its inspiration and devoured the ba stone, the magical stone that was placed with the dead as a heart token. If someone didn’t know the spells, didn’t know the words of protection, their souls were in certain danger.

  Angry now, Kira pushed further back along the timeline, looking for the trigger event. Either something along the path through the tomb or something outside the exhibit had caused Wynne to be marked as a target. Kira needed to find it. Only then could she face it.

  Wynne entered the main promenade. Outside the exhibit hall she recognized the exhibit coordinator, Hammond. She called to him, introduced herself as Kira’s friend. Hammond beamed as they shook hands. He gave Wynne the scarab and told her the trip through the tomb was not to be missed.

  A flare of anger, and the vision wobbled. Kira wrestled her emotions back under control and focused on the remainder of the reading. Hammond had given the scarab to Wynne. Wynne had carried it throughout her journey through the exhibit, charging it with her energy. By the time she had tossed the scarab onto the measuring pan, the gemstone had been coated with her essence.

  Had the scarab been be-spelled in some way, programmed to be devoured by Ammit? Was that why Wynne was in a coma?

  Had someone reanimated the demoness? Ammit didn’t put people into comas. She devoured their souls until nothing was left. Did that mean that Wynne—and all the other victims—were still in danger?

  Kira tamped down her emotions again, concentrating instead on fighting her way free of the amulet much the way she would break through jungle undergrowth. It took a long time, as she had to be careful not to trigger the amulet’s protective magic. Luckily it seemed to realize she wasn’t a threat. She made her way back to herself, allowing her extrasense to slowly seep back into her subconscious.

  Khefar stared at her from the other side of the desk, his features tight. “You okay?”

  She nodded, wishing she’d thought to bring a bottle of water with her. “Better than the last round.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Disturbing things.” She pulled her glove back, feeling better immediately. Anger still simmered below the surface, though, waiting for an outlet. “I think I know what happened to Wynne and the others. And they’re not out of danger yet.”

  Chap†er 18

  Kira pushed to her feet. “Come on. I need to see if Sanchez is here. If not, I’ll have to call the Travel Department.”

  “Ah. ‘Travel.’ The Retrievers you called for the were-hyena?” Khefar asked.

  “Yup.” She dropped the pendant into her coat pocket. “‘Travel’ is what field agents call the Special Retrieval Team. They respond when an agent is down. We also call them when we need to have a suspect brought in for questioning. ‘Coach’ means a human or a low-level hybrid. ‘Business class’ means a pretty strong hybrid and a show of force.”

  “What’s ‘first class’?”

  “Shadow Adepts. If the agent thinks there’s a serious threat, they’ll call for a Chaser as backup.”

  “What about the Fallen?”

  “That’s ‘express,’ and that means I go in. We don’t send SRTs for that. There’s no such thing as backup for a Shadowchaser. Not as far as Gilead is concerned, anyway.”

  They returned to the coma wing’s main corridor. Section Chief Estrella Sanchez, Zoo, and two Gilead agents took up most of the space in the hallway. Zoo and the section chief conferred quietly, heads close together. Kira’s gut roiled at the thought of her friend and Sanchez being so chummy, but squashed it, blanking her expression instead. She and the section chief were gett
ing along, but Kira knew it wouldn’t take much to get on Sanchez’s bad side. Zoo spilling his guts about the incident in the cemetery or his unfounded suspicions would be enough to put Kira and Sanchez at odds again. She had to remember that when they agreed to Gilead training, the Marlowes had essentially stopped working with her and begun working for Gilead, and Sanchez.

  Telling herself she had done nothing wrong, Kira steeled herself to approach the Gilead contingent. Sanchez turned away from Zoo, who looked decidedly guilty. The section chief looked much the way she usually did, somewhat suspicious that Kira would somehow soon be making life more difficult or at least breaking several protocols any minute. After their conversation at the office, Kira figured Sanchez would be even more suspicious than usual.

  “Marlowe tells me that you were going to attempt to find the assailant through a pendant he gave his wife. Were you able to recover anything useful?”

  “Yes.” Kira pulled the pendant out of her pocket, intending to return it to Zoo. One of the agents took it instead, slipping it into a small clear-plastic evidence bag.

  “We’ll have one of our psychometrists corroborate and create an official record,” Sanchez explained. “What did you find?”

  Don’t be defensive, Kira silently cautioned herself. Corroborating psychic evidence is standard operating procedure. “The problem is the exhibit.”

  “The exhibit?” Sanchez echoed. “You mean the one you organized down at the Congress Center?”

  Kira ground her teeth. “If you recall, I’m not the organizer. I coordinated the artifacts for the exhibit. Mr. Hammond—you remember him, don’t you? The one you were so chummy with before you gave him that big check? He’s the organizer, and it’s his part of the production that’s the problem.”

  Even in the muted light of the corridor, Kira could see a flush staining Sanchez’s olive cheeks. “How so?”

  “At the end, at the Weighing of the Heart ceremony. Wynne tossed one of those heart gemstones onto the measuring plate. It shifted to being unbalanced, which triggered the Ammit statue. Somehow Ammit is siphoning off the victim’s consciousness as a prelude to devouring his or her soul.”