Shadowed Blade (Colbana Files Book 6)

by J. C. Daniels

  Colleen used it, but it seemed out of place here—and way too strong. Following the scent, I let my gaze skim up and down, my thoughts drifting. I didn’t want to guide them. I’d tune in on things faster if I let my instincts take over.

  When I saw it, everything inside me tensed.

  “Doyle.”

  Although he was on the far side of the property, he heard me and was at my side in under a minute. Others followed after, the two cats from the Clan, one a tall, thin man who’d told me to call him Roper and a svelte woman who was so pretty and delicate, she looked like a fairy. Her vivid red hair was cut short and her eyes, blue as the summer sky, twinkled and laughed. Her name, incongruously, was Mo. When I’d asked her about it, she’d said it was short for Maureen and nobody ever called her that. Of course, I’d asked why.

  She’d stopped smiling. “It was my mom’s name.”

  There was pain in the answer. I didn’t ask any more questions.

  While I didn’t know Roper at all, I’d seen Mo around off and on and I knew she was a wicked fighter. That they were here meant Damon trusted them.

  They both stopped some distance away and Mo crossed her arms under her breasts, while Roper muttered, “Well, ain’t that some shit.”

  The wolves were slower to arrive, but they’d been checking things out around the small subdivision.

  “It’s a hide,” I said softly.

  Nobody responded. It was obvious what it was, and the smell in the air made it even more obvious why it hadn’t immediately been obvious to anybody. Somebody had crushed lemongrass, and the pungent odor was masking the subtler scent that I could only barely pick out.

  “Somebody’s been watching,” I said.

  “Yes.” It was one of the wolves who spoke. Pilar’s dark eyes were hard, deepening the lines around her eyes. She’d been in her mid-forties when she changed—a handsome woman, strong-featured and strong-willed and she looked unimpressed with the world, this assignment…me. “Question is, was this person watching your friend, the same one who grabbed her?”

  “Who else would it be?” Mo asked.

  “Seems to me that whoever has been here was here for quite a while. The lemongrass is strong in the air. It’s been being used regularly, for days even.”

  “They could have been waiting for both of them.” Roper popped a piece of gum into his mouth and started to chomp on it in a way that made me wonder if he used to have a smoking habit. The way he looked at Pilar made me think he wasn’t disagreeing with her, simply offering another option.

  “How likely is that?” Pilar directed the question my way. “Did your friend Greaves make a habit of coming out here with the other witch?”

  “No.” Crouching in the grass, I studied it. It wasn’t crushed flat, the way you’d expect if somebody had been tramping around here—somebody who could come and go without leaving a trace. “Nova?”

  He’d been quiet for the most part, but now he pushed his way through the others to crouch at my side.

  “The people who took them. Were they human?”

  He grunted his assent. “Went for Colleen first. Tranqed her, then him.” He paused, eyes just slits in his face. “I see it, clear as a movie in my head, Kit. Fuck me for not being here.”

  “You’re not all-powerful, Nova.” I rested a hand on his shoulder, felt the muscles tensing under my hand, his whip-lean body taut as a bowstring.

  “The hell I’m not.” There wasn’t arrogance in his voice, just a calm assurance of his own abilities, as though he knew, without a doubt that he could have stopped this, if he’d only known in time.

  I had little doubt of it. If he’d been here, he would have. Pushing it aside, I said softly, “Tranqs. How did they catch Justin off guard with tranqs?” But I answered my own question a moment later. “He was still injured, moving slow. That damage to his lungs would have killed him if he wasn’t a witch. Plus, he was still on the mend from the last injury. Once they had Colleen, his focus would have splintered. It was the perfect storm of badness, just waiting.”

  “He’s running low on power, strength…they couldn’t have timed it better and if they knew he was injured, knew how to handle witches?” Nova suggested.

  “They would if it was Blackstone.” I tipped my head back, staring up at the tree, seeking out the branch where somebody had perched—regularly—until recently. “This person—our watcher—wasn’t human. Humans can’t do this, no matter how patient, how well trained. So who was watching…and where is he now?”

  “She.”

  I looked over at the male wolf who hadn’t spoken until now. Michael Grimm rubbed his nose when I looked at him and glanced away. “Whoever was here, ma’am, we’re dealing with a woman. I can tell that much, even under the stink of all that lemongrass. Can’t make out much more and couldn’t track it if my life depended on it, but it was a woman.”

  I sketched a glance around at the others, but nobody offered an agreement or dissent. After remaining quiet a moment, Michael said, “My Alpha sent me along for a reason, see. My nose is…better than most. Or worse, depending on how you look at it. See, I’ve got what they have determined is—”

  “Don’t mess with the scientific explanation, Grimm,” Pilar said. “Keep it short.”

  He grumbled under his breath, but hitched his shoulders in what was likely an acquiescent shrug as I’d already determined her to be the dominant of the two. “We’ll go with the fact that my nose is fucked up, ma’am. A mutation of sorts, thanks to twice as many olfactory cells in my nose than most people. I can smell twice as good as the typical wolf—if something dies five miles from here, I can tell you where it is. And there’s a lot of dead things. If we get close enough to your people, I’ll be able to track them. That tree right there…there was a woman up in it. Not a man.”

  Slowly, I turned my head and stared back up at the tree.

  For some reason, I found myself thinking of the rough, gravelly voice that had pulled me out of a sleep not all that long ago.

  You need to move. Four simple words.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of shit cell phone, dialed a number.

  I hoped I had it right.

  I’d only seen it twice.

  It rang.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  The fourth, there was a dead air, then a beep.

  I left a message and hung up.

  Let’s see if my instincts were as good as I thought they were—as I hoped they were.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was another four hours before we stopped.

  I’d had three calls, but none were the ones I’d been waiting on.

  Chang had been sending me leads on what he thought were possible sites to check out. I marked two off the list just by looking at a map and told him so.

  “It would make this easier if you gave me a general idea of just where you’re going.”

  “North,” I said.

  “North. Lovely.”

  “I’m going to Georgia. I know that much.” Brooding over the map, I shoved my hair out of my face and tried to think of anything but Justin and Colleen. Especially Colleen. Justin, even injured, could handle a whole lot of torture and misery. Colleen, though, she’d never had to. She was a healer. She was an empath. She’d been through the loss of her daughter, and that had all but shattered her. I didn’t want to think of the kind of hell this might be bringing on her.

  “Nova—he said he escaped Blackstone. Are you heading in that direction?”

  “No,” I murmured, unsure why that was, but something was steering me away from there just yet. “Gimme a minute.”

  Bent over the map, I made a few more marks on it and then took a picture, sending it to Chang. “Focus on that area.” After I disconnected, I called Nova over and he looked at the map, his mouth tightening when he did.

  “Chang is tracking down the facility,” he said.

  “What?”

  Nova glanced
up at me and tapped the wide circle I put on the map, located between three of my Xs.

  “I don’t know how long I walked, but when I busted loose, yeah. It was around there. Big ass place, a private facility, hospital or something at one point. It had been fortified, turned into a veritable fortress. It was all underground. The surface of the place was just ruins, or it looked like it. But they’d reinforced everything. I practically needed wings to get out.” He shrugged. “I guess I could have blasted the walls, but like I said, some of those people can’t get out. Others…well, they shouldn’t. Blackstone’s destroyed them. If Chang didn’t track it down…” His eyes slide to me. “Oh.”

  “It’s called logic and reason. Three missing persons that we know of, but nothing in that spot. Just around it.” Scowling, I tapped out how the Xs I used for each missing person formed a vague path, pointing that direction, save for the final two, one maybe thirty miles east, one maybe thirty miles west. “They stay out of that immediate area. I figured it was for a reason.”

  “Well, their spot in somewhere…” He waved a hand at the map. “Yeah, you’re on the right track. Tell you what—that whole place? It’s dead there. There’s people but the place is…it’s dead. It’s like the life of the earth is dying. Any witch in that vicinity, you’d think she’d go insane. That…emptiness. I’ve felt it before. In the war,” he said absently, scraping at the beard growth on his face and frowning.

  “The war?”

  The frown on his face deepened and he turned away. “We should get something to eat before they devour everything in there.”

  We’d stopped at a roadside dive advertising BBQ, along with a sign that read, Your money is good here. It was a subtle way for the owner to make it clear he didn’t care about the type of customers, just the color of the money. Green was what mattered to him.

  But as empty as my belly was, that little bomb Nova had just dropped made my head feel like the world had shifted around on its axis.

  The war—

  The last war that had been fought had been forty years ago. At least the last major war that America had been caught up in. And it had been one that had involved pretty much the entire world. When it was done, the face of humanity had been altered forever. That us vs. them mentality that was supposedly settled by the treaties hadn’t been settled at all—and the marks left, the prejudices left, we were still dealing with them.

  The war. Forty years ago.

  Nova couldn’t be that old. Could he?

  “Were you in the war, Nova?”

  I didn’t raise my voice when I asked him.

  But I didn’t have to.

  He stopped in his tracks and looked back at me, his face remote. “Which one?”

  Then he kept on walking.

  The phone finally did ring.

  Somehow, even before I looked, I knew who it was.

  So I didn’t look.

  I just swiped the screen and pressed it to my ear and waited.

  “It took you long enough to make the connection. Where are you?” Her voice, raspy as ever, came out as it had the first time we’d talked. Blunt and to the point.

  “Interesting question. And really, it didn’t take that long. I called you hours ago. Before I tell you where I am, I’d like some information myself. Why were you watching my friends and who the hell are you?”

  “Perhaps we should consider exchanging some information on both sides, Kitasa.”

  My skin went tight at the sound of my real name and I closed one hand into a fist. Looking around, I debated on whether or not to share anything with her.

  We’d stopped to reconnoiter and let me think; I couldn’t help but marvel over the timing of the call. It almost had me thinking I needed to ditch the phone, but even as I considered it, I brushed the idea aside. I needed to talk to this woman. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I wasn’t severing this connection. Pacing over to the window, long since emptied of the glass, I stared outside at the vastness of the forest.

  It grew around us in almost feverish desperation, as if determined to reclaim the earth. The house we were in was one Justin and I had used before. Two hundred years ago, it had been a lush, elegant mansion—a plantation, I’d learned they’d called them—used back when humans enslaved humans. The first civil war.

  The brutality of people in general—human and NH alike—never ceased to amaze me. Even now, the air around this place was thick with sadness and despair, as though it had been worked into the soil, along with the tears, blood, and sweat that had dripped from the bodies of so many slaves.

  Finally, I said, “I’m standing on the grounds of an old hell. And I go by Kit. Now where are you?”

  “I’m witnessing the making of a new one. How interesting…Kit.”

  She rolled my name around on her tongue as though learning the taste of it.

  “Interesting.” Eyes narrowed, I shifted my gaze to the skeletal remains of what I’d learned had been the slave quarters. Back when this place had thrived, they wouldn’t have been so easily visible, but time had a way of undoing what man tried to do. “Just what do you find interesting about witnessing hell in the making?”

  As I’d gone through my own hell under the eyes of witnesses, I wasn’t so keen on somebody finding anything interesting about another’s hell.

  “Oh, it’s not the making of it that interests me. It’s just the fact that both of us find ourselves on the edge of hell, old and new.” She sighed softly. “I often find myself on the sidelines of such.”

  I didn’t want to deliberate over that too long.

  “Why were you watching Colleen?” I demanded.

  “I was waiting for you.”

  That wasn’t what I expected. Rubbing the back of my neck, I turned away from the window and stared around. Doyle had slipped into the room. Part of me had realized that, but I was so used to him, so attuned to him, I hadn’t thought much of it and now, seeing him standing there in the doorframe caught me off guard.

  “Why were you waiting for me?”

  “I needed to speak with you and your home, your office, they are not particularly…private.” She spoke slowly as if choosing her words with care. “And the cats with whom you have allied yourself have made it clear they are not particularly welcoming to outsiders.”

  My jaw went tight at the reminder, but didn’t let anything show as I said, “If you were that determined to meet me, you could have called, left a message at my office or at my house.”

  “And you’re the trusting type. Would have willingly agreed to approach me at a place of my choosing, alone.” She laughed drolly and the amusement in her voice sounded real.

  “There a reason why I have to talk to you alone? Because generally people who don’t have any ulterior motives aren’t all that worried about that kind of thing.”

  Again, another laugh. “But I do have ulterior motives. You might trust your cats, Kit—”

  She stopped so abruptly, I wondered what else she’d been about to say. When she didn’t continue, I forged on. “Yes. I do trust the cats—or at least most of them.” There were still a number of them who didn’t like me, and who believed I had no place there as I wasn’t Clan—and never would be.

  Whether there would be a reckoning over that, I didn’t know but it didn’t change the fact that I had placed my faith in the Clan—Damon, in Doyle, Chang, Scott. Even in Shanelle, although I knew she would have to make a hard choice on where she placed her faith soon.

  Pushing all of that aside, I said, “So if this is about the cats...”

  “It’s not. It’s about...well, I was there because I wanted to talk to you about things that are of no concern to them, and I wanted to make sure I had your undivided attention. They seem to think what concerns you concerns them and I don’t share that idea. And none of that has anything to do with the fact that I’m now trailing your two friends.”

  She couldn’t have shocked me anymore if she reached through the phone and punched me. I’d been trying to get a g
auge on whether or not I could trust her, trying to decide if she’d lie or mislead me when I pushed for information about what she’d seen—but she was trailing them?

  “Where are you?” I demanded.

  “The signs I passed tell me I’m in Georgia. There were other signs—road signs, all numbers that blur together. Then a few names for towns. We’re in a small one now. It’s dead. Decayed. A war ran it over.”

  “A war…” I stopped, shaking my head because I understood what she meant. There were a number of small towns that were just gone, more victims of the war. “Where is it? What’s the name?”

  “I haven’t seen it. There are houses, all empty. People died here. Nobody comes here. I think that’s why they chose this place. It’s abandoned and save for me, nobody hears the screams.”

  Screams.

  “Who has them?” I demanded, fury starting to pump inside me, so hot and potent, I could feel flesh giving way under my blade. Heat gathered in my hand and I rubbed it against my leg repeatedly, trying to ease the ache there. “Tell me.”

  “Humans.” She sounded bored, as though she weren’t describing anything more interesting than a dead cockroach. “Meaner, more resourceful than I would give them credit for, but they are just human. If your witch wasn’t so injured, he would have turned them to ash by now. They have him drugged, and her. But they watch her less. She isn’t one of their fighters. They seem to understand witches.”

  “They would.” Drilling the heel of my hand against my head, I stared at the map. “Are you…” I blew out a breath. “Are you closer to the east or west?” I needed to go north.

  “North. Then east. We crossed the border to another state—they’ve begun to build walls,” she said, her tone dry. “People always think walls will keep them safe.”

  Walls.

  South Carolina.

  I strode over to the map and bent over it. They’d started the construction, just as promised, claiming they would focus on the more rural zones because that’s where the feral vampire menace had raged out of control. Strangely enough, the government was subsidizing it. At first, they’d demanded that the vampire houses cover the cost as they’d been the ones responsible for getting the feral population under control, but then things had changed.