Shadowed Blade (Colbana Files Book 6)

by J. C. Daniels

  “Where?” I demanded again. “How far north?”

  “You are very demanding. There are falls. A lot of water. Use your brain, girl.” The line went dead.

  Furious, I spun around and threw the phone.

  Doyle snatched it out of the air as he came my way.

  I was already bent back over the map when he reached me. If I looked at it much harder, I might go blind, but that didn’t stop me. The roads, names of towns, the very lines on it seemed to waver and dance in front of me. Use your head, girl.

  Those words echoed in my brain, mocking me.

  “Who was that?” Doyle asked quietly.

  “I don’t know.” I gripped the edge of the table so hard, the splintering edges of it cut into my fingers. I ignored the minor stings and focused harder. North. North. North.

  If Justin was here, he’d tell me to focus.

  He’d tell me to breathe, to think.

  Doyle rested a hand on my shoulder.

  “Kit.”

  “It was the woman who was in the hide, Doyle. She’s following them. But she can’t tell me where she is. What kind of fucking idiot describes a place by a mess of trees and a waterfall and…” Ready to scream, I shoved my hands through my hair and then went back to trying to squeeze the table edges into nothingness.

  “If this was me right now, you’d be telling me to take a breath. Breathe. Focus. Do all the shit you’re always telling me to do.”

  It startled a sharp laugh out of me. “Fine…I’ll shut the hell up and listen.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Somebody came into the room and he turned to deal with it. I stared at the map, bent over closer. The walls.

  They had already started on them, working in the least populated areas.

  A waterfall.

  Grabbing my knife, I started to toss it from hand to hand. So many lakes and rivers around here. Almost like my own personal hell—my home, I thought sourly. Not that it was home.

  It was just…hell.

  Use your head, girl...

  The knife slipped from my hand.

  The point went straight down on the map.

  Head cocked, I bent closer.

  Calhoun Falls.

  And I knew.

  “Here,” I said to Doyle. “We’re going here.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “If you are going to toward the South Carolina border, why am I digging up information on this area around…” Chang paused. “Milledgeville?”

  “Because they don’t have Justin and Colleen there.”

  Mo was driving while I split my time between talking to Chang, trying to convince him that he didn’t need to update Damon about our destination all while I was trying to dig up my own information about Calhoun Falls.

  So far, I was having luck with at least one of my goals.

  I could tell a whole lot of nothing had happened with Calhoun Falls since the end of the war. A couple of weres had tried to make it their stronghold, refusing to toe the new line drawn by the Assembly. The small, troublesome faction of weres no longer existed. Not just for refusing to toe the line, of course. They’d drawn their own line by slaughtering nearly thirty people while reinforcing what they’d thought would be a solid fortress.

  They’d been one of the first cases for the newly formed Bureau of American Non-Human Affairs. The earliest Banner units hadn’t been quite as neat and they’d cut an ugly swath through more than a dozen others, including innocent shifters before they took out the bastards involved. Most humans had left smaller places like that, taking up refuge in larger cities or the camps that had popped up by the dozens—all clearly marked by the National Guard or other military units—humans only, all others will be exterminated. Not executed. Exterminated.

  It had turned into just another one of the ghost towns, a sad, silent victim of a war that hadn’t needed to happen.

  Tracing a finger over the line that marked the border, I said, “Nova knows the general area of the hospital—he has it narrowed down to a few hundred square miles. I’m guessing Milledgeville—it’s almost dead between the two northernmost disappearances, and then there’s nothing. The incidences were like a trail leading north, then it stops, right there. My gut tells me we’ve got something going on there.”

  “So why aren’t you going there?”

  “Because that’s not where Justin and Colleen are.” I didn’t tell him about the call or my odd helper. It would come with questions I couldn’t answer and I knew anything I said to Chang would be relayed to Damon in some way, shape, or form.

  There was a pause that lasted forever and when it finally ended, Chang said, “Would you switch to video?”

  “Can’t right now. Need my attention on something else.” I was still eying the map, but that wasn’t exactly what held my focus. I just wasn’t going to look at Chang and risk him seeing something in my face that he didn’t need to see. “But I need that info and I can’t do what I need to do here and dig up info on that area, too. Besides, you’re better at it then I am.”

  “Nice snow job, Kit. Very nice. I almost believe that’s entirely why you called. Almost.” After an exaggerated, pained sigh, he continued. “I assume that whatever you are up to is something that would cause Damon great concern. I’m going to go with past experience and assume you can handle this. Don’t make me regret it.”

  “Never.” Rubbing my thumb over the hilt of my sword, I considered the roads leading toward our destination and I mentally compared them to the roads presented by the computer’s GPS mapping system. Some of the roads on my map no longer showed on the GPS, but that just meant they weren’t actively used or kept up.

  The roads themselves, or parts of them would still be there.

  “Go in that way,” I murmured.

  “Kit...”

  Chang’s voice drew me back to the conversation. “Stop worrying. You’re like a mother hen.”

  “I’d be insulted except that sometimes you require a mother hen. Keep your neck safe, if you would.” He disconnected and I went back to brooding over the map.

  “Eat.” Doyle shoved some food in front of me. It was a sandwich wrapped in wilted paper and I suspected it would be about as tasty as the paper itself, but I took it and unwrapped it, shoving a quarter of it into my mouth. It was like sawdust.

  Doyle nudged me over and settled in next to me, studying the map.

  He’d figured out the general area of our destination. It had taken him longer. but he was younger and he had only received what miserable training I could offer. Mine had never been as thorough as it could be. It had been ended rather abruptly after I killed a cousin who raped me, then two of the royal guards and fled, knowing I’d be dead if I was caught.

  He was coming along well, though. Shifters were instinctive creatures anyway and he’d never been taught to shy from those instincts.

  I continued to eat the tasteless sandwich while he studied the two maps.

  “We’ll never make it there in the cars, not without drawing attention,” he said finally.

  “Nope.”

  Slanting me a narrow look, he asked, “Have you figured out what we’ll do next?”

  In response, I used the tip of a pen to point out the nearest small town on the Georgia side that still had through-traffic. “It’s ten miles out. We can cover that distance on foot in no time. There are hotels. I’ll get rooms. We’ll leave the cars.”

  Doyle grunted in disgust. “Rooms in Georgia for us?”

  “Nova and I will handle it.” Sighing, I pulled a hand through my hair and then looked down at my clothes. “I can pass for human as long as nobody there is anything but human. If Nova wears shades and doesn’t act too crazy, nobody will think anything of him. You all…well...”

  “Let us out a few miles outside of town.” Doyle tugged absently on his left ear. “Whole place has coverage. We’ll stay to the trees. Nobody will see or hear us unless we want them to. We’ll find you. Maybe you’ll luck out and they’ll ha
ve those separate units and we can all meet up in one of them.”

  “Maybe.” I grimaced, doubting the kind of luck I had was going to stretch that far. “So we leave the cars there, wait until nightfall, and head in.”

  “Best bet.” He turned then, facing me. We were at a small, rundown gas station, another place that had a sign out in front. Your money is good here. I caught the scent of weres all over the places. Seemed there were more than a few people who weren’t all too keen on the idea of shutting people out, although for the most part, Nova and I did most of the interactions while the shifters kept to themselves.

  I didn’t blame them.

  Earlier somebody had seen Pilar and pegged her in an instant. He’d spat on the ground at her feet, as if waiting to see what she’d do.

  She hadn’t done anything.

  But Nova had given him a nudge to move it along, in the form of his car starting to roll its way out of the parking spot.

  He had given me a look of pure innocence, but I’d seen the amusement in his eyes as the jerk screamed obscenities and ran the car down.

  As if he’d sensed my thoughts—and maybe he had—Nova came strolling up, the remains of a sandwich similar to mine in his hand, the paper crumpled into a ball. “Are we ready, fearless leader?” he asked, drawling so hard on the r, it came out more like lead-uh. “I assume y’all have worked out your plan of attack.”

  Doyle cocked his head, curiosity in his gaze. “Just what are you?”

  “Crazy.” Nova flashed a grin. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  When Doyle went to press further, I bumped him with my elbow. “Let it go. If he decides to elaborate, he will. Otherwise, you’ll figure it out on your own soon enough.” As Nova shifted his attention my way, I nodded. “We’ve got an idea. You want to hear it?”

  “No. Like I said, you’re the fearless leader.” Restless, his gaze roamed all over and I could tell there was something on his mind.

  “Doyle, why don’t you go round everybody up?” I looked over at him.

  He recognized the ruse for what it was—giving Nova and I the pretense of privacy. Unless Nova decided he really, really wanted to be private. If he decided he wanted to have a one-to-one chat, it would happen inside my skull where only the two of us were privy to it.

  “Everything okay?” I asked as he took up the spot where Doyle had been just a moment earlier.

  “Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Just something weird in the air. Unexpected.” He hitched a shoulder. “What happened with your sword, Kit?”

  Now that was unexpected. Shoving away from the car, I paced a few steps away as tension turned my spine into a steel pipe. “Not something I wanted to talk about, Nova.”

  “Somebody had their hands in your head. I can see that. She do it?”

  Gnashing my teeth together, I pivoted, a hundred ugly things on my tongue, but the expression on his face shut them all down. He looked worried…and a little sad. I couldn’t think of any time when I’d seen him sad. Even knowing he was looking down the gauntlet to his own death hadn’t made him sad.

  “Why haven’t you just looked for yourself?”

  “Because you asked me not to go poking in your head.” Those white, eerie eyes moved away. “I try to respect it when a friend asks. I’d only do it if I felt I had to. Just like I’m only asking now because I feel like I need to know. I can tell it hurts to talk about it. It’s all over you, the pain of what happened. It’s stinging my head, so trust me, I’m not doing this because I want to.”

  Oxygen had gotten trapped up in my lungs, and I forced myself to breathe out. Then to breathe in. As long as I was focusing on breathing, it was easier to stay somewhat distant.

  “Jude Whittier,” I said, and I was surprised at how calm I sounded.

  Nova’s lids drooped lower. “He’s a piece of scum. Haven’t heard much about him lately.”

  “That’s because he kidnapped me almost a year ago. Hauled me up to someplace in the Canadian Rockies. He had a witch—one of the warriors who doesn’t really give a fuck who he fucks over as long as he gets the money he’s owed. The guy was able to go in and snap the bond with my sword. I can’t call her anymore.”

  A slow sighing sort of breath escaped Nova, and he lifted his head to the sky.

  “The witch?”

  “Dead. That’s one ounce of flesh I got back at least.”

  “And Whittier?”

  “Locked in a silver casket for another forty-nine years.” My gut crawled thinking about it because as long as Jude was alive, I don’t know if I’d ever feel safe again—and I hated that, hated that fear. Hated it.

  “Huh.” Nova ran his tongue along his teeth. “I should have asked back in Orlando. I could have turned his insides into his outsides and when they exhumed him, it would be a real exhumation—nothing but a true corpse.”

  It was enough to make me smile.

  Nova shoved off the car and came closer, his eyes on mine. “And the woman—the one who stuck her hands inside your head?”

  “Her hands…” Hissing a little, I pushed that image away. I know he didn’t mean it literally, but I’d been too busy screaming, then being unconscious to know just what had happened. “I don’t know. She was trying to…I think she tried to fix it. But it can’t be fixed. It’s not like putting a car in a repair shop. This is more like shattering a blade.”

  For a second, Nova’s eyes started to glow and again, I had the feeling he wanted to say something.

  But he just stopped and shook his head.

  “We should get going. We’ve got friends to save, I’ve got people to kill, myself included.”

  He turned away.

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “For fuck’s sake, would you quit talking about it like you’re just crushing a palmetto bug under your boot heel or something?” I snapped, circling around and glaring at him. He was a few inches taller than me so I had to tip my head back to do it, but I was so tired of hearing it. He talked about his death like it was…nothing. Like his life meant nothing.

  To my surprise, he reached up and touched my cheek.

  Shifters had gathered around us.

  In their eyes, he was committing a cardinal sin. He wasn’t part of their clan and he was touching the Alpha’s mate. Man, I hated that word, but that was how they’d view it.

  But he was my friend.

  I closed my hand around his wrist, his skin cold under my skin. He was always cold, like the very energy inside him sapped all his body heat.

  “Why do you have to do it? It’s like you think the only purpose you serve is dying, by finishing whatever it is you saw yourself doing all those years ago. But there are people who don’t like hearing about it, Nova.” I’m one of them.

  “It’s nice,” he said, smiling a little. “Realizing there are people who are going to miss me. I didn’t think that would happen.”

  Then he turned and headed toward the second car.

  “Asshole,” I muttered.

  As I climbed into mine, I tried to pretend there wasn’t an ache inside.

  I tried.

  I failed.

  We’d left the hotel behind more than two hours ago.

  It had only taken us thirty minutes or so to reach the road I’d intended to use to take us the rest of the way to Calhoun Falls. The remainder of the time was spent moving through the woods, because the road that I’d expected to be little more than ruins had been surprisingly well-maintained—and in use.

  Government vehicles traversed along that well-maintained road, which was why we’d retreated into the woods. There were several paths we could have followed, as pointed out by Pilar and Mo, but I wasn’t following a path. Paths were there because they were used. Night or not, I wasn’t going to walk along something that other people used regularly enough to leave a trail.

  Besides, there was more coverage in the trees and after looking for a short time, I’d found a game trail. That, I would use.

&nb
sp; Mike had asked me if I ever went hunting.

  I’d laughed and told him not the way he thought.

  He was in the lead. He’d said earlier that he could smell humans—and something else. He was having a hard time nailing down that something else, but his nose had impressed me, so he was taking point, following my general guidance about what direction to take.

  “Something’s not right about this,” Doyle muttered as Pilar signaled for everybody to freeze yet again. Another vehicle. Nearly a half mile off, but if they were scanning the area with any sort of electronics, motion would tip them off quicker than anything.

  “Yeah. I figured that out from the get-go,” I said as we pressed our backs to the closest trees.

  “If they’re constructing walls to help with a so-called vampire threat in the rural areas, where are the vampires? I haven’t caught scent of even one. And ferals, aren’t they pretty…noticeable?”

  I nodded. Feral vamps retreated to a state so animalistic, they might as well be animals. Very rabid, very dangerous animals. They stank of rotting blood and rotting meat, thanks to their lack of intelligence—they forgot they weren’t meant to eat their prey and very often, they did and that meat just collected inside them, going fetid and eventually it sickened the vampire and it collapsed, dying from true starvation. Nobody is meant to carry food in their gut forever.

  Their bodies couldn’t process solids anymore, but they didn’t understand that and while that…meat stayed inside them with no way to come out, well, it wasn’t pretty.

  “So what’s the deal?” Doyle asked.

  Shaking my head, I continued to work the puzzle in silence.

  The last time I’d been to South Carolina had been following up on a job…hell, well over a year. No. Right around a year ago, I realized. Delivering severed heads.