Of Shadow Born (The Icarus Unit)

by S. L. Gray

  "Talk about the weather. Share your hobbies." Though she kept her tone light, he could all but taste irritation in her words. "Explain what the tablet meant by finding a child who's a sage."

  Kade dug his fingers into the corners of his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. It helped ease the pressure of his mounting headache. "You couldn't ask an easy question?"

  He caught the mischievous shift of her expression when he opened his eyes again. "When you go easy on me, I'll return the favor."

  She had him and she knew it. Kade ground his teeth and ducked his head. "I tell you a story and you stop fighting me?"

  Melanie nodded solemnly and thrust out a hand to shake. "Cross my heart."

  He folded his fingers around hers and shook firmly. "Deal. And I'll hold you to it."

  "Somehow I'm not surprised." She took the agreement as an invitation to shift closer on the couch and drew her legs up beneath her, leaning against his side in what had become habit. She twisted her fingers into the shirt wrinkles at his waist. "So?"

  "So." Kade exhaled. He had no need to embellish the words. They were strange enough on their own. "The story goes that the night we were created, when our families were cursed to the shadow and the pharaoh was killed, there was a storm the likes of which Egypt had never seen. Some places got a downpour, others were blasted by sand, but the one thing that stayed the same was the wind.

  "It howled, they said, like it carried the pain of the world. It couldn't be ignored or blotted out by covering your ears or shouting over it. No music drowned it, no kind of noise could mute the sound. In some villages, the very old died of fright when they heard it. Babies wailed and children wept.

  "Except one girl." Kade shook his head. He'd never liked this story. It made the hair on his arms stand on end, no matter how old it was. Whether or not it was true. "She wasn't afraid. Instead of hiding, she went looking for the source of the sound. She knew, somehow, that it wasn't natural. She wandered from her family and through the empty streets until she reached the pharaoh's home.

  "What she saw, no one can say. They found her there in the morning, on her hands and knees, eyes fixed on the boy's body. They couldn't ask for answers, because she wouldn't speak. She moved and ate, but she didn't sleep and had never learned how to write."

  Melanie shifted against him. "So why does that make her a sage? It sounds to me like you're talking about a traumatized child. If she saw her king murdered, it's not surprising that she didn't speak."

  "But she did," Kade told her. "When there was something to say. She started by predicting an early flood. Then she would warn of invasions or droughts or disease. She knew things the wisest men in Egypt couldn't foresee. More than that, she never slept again or aged at all."

  Melanie studied him a long while in silence, her eyebrows drawn together, before she broke it with a laugh. "That's impossible."

  "As impossible as walking through the shadows," he agreed.

  So much for her amusement. Her laughter died and she hugged herself, leaning against him less now. "So what happened to her? This impossible child."

  "She moved from place to place, family to family. They took responsibility for her in turn. Protected her and treated her like one of their own."

  "Then someone has her now," Melanie guessed.

  Kade smiled a little. "So goes the theory."

  "Theory." Her eyebrows knitted again. "You don't know?"

  He shook his head. "I've never seen her. For all I know, she's just a myth. The tablet seems to think she's real..."

  "But after all this time," she picked up where he’d left off. "Kade, what if she isn't? What if something's happened to her? What about the prophecy?"

  "Garamendi would have said something." He thought. He hoped. True, given his self-imposed leave of absence, he'd been out of the loop. He still felt sure if something that major had changed, one of the team — Sylvie, or Farris, if not the boss himself — would have mentioned it. No reason to keep it from him, anyway. "If something's changed, we'll work around it. People disappear all the time. There are always other ways."

  She fell silent again, words nearly visible on her lips, though she held them back. She frowned at his chest as though she might read encouragement written on his shirt. When her gaze lifted to his again, uncertainty darkened her eyes. "Who was it? Can I ask without offending?"

  Kade frowned. "Who was what?"

  "The one who disappeared?" She studied him, watching for something he couldn't guard against. "For you, I mean. Who did you lose?"

  "What does that have to do with the sage's story?"

  "Nothing, directly." She kept studying him. "You just looked so sad telling it. About her being there at the death of the pharaoh. Like you knew how she must have felt." She paused a moment, maybe deciding whether she should speak again, then sat up straighter and took a breath.

  He knew that posture. She would charge ahead with the thought behind her teeth and damn the consequences. "You told me her story. What about the rest of yours?"

  Half a dozen answers sprang to mind. Misdirection, half-truths and flat-out lies would be easy to tell. Bound together though they might be, his failures were his to live with and she definitely didn't need to know.

  He'd been telling himself that since he'd met her. Before Melanie, he’d convinced himself that he didn't need to share the burden of his guilt. When he'd stayed away and on his own, it made sense. He hadn't had a choice. Now, with her watching him so intently, waiting for an answer, he doubted the wisdom of the thought. Grief shared was grief lessened, wasn't that how the saying went?

  But she needed him to be strong for her, to be the protector he claimed to be. She couldn't know all the details if he wanted her to feel safe and trust in him enough that she'd keep practicing. If she knew how he'd let down his last team, despite what they'd meant to him, how could she believe he'd do all he could for her sake?

  He couldn't look at her, whether he should or not. He tilted his head until his neck cracked, then squared his shoulders. Confessing didn't come easy. He curled his fingers against his legs and stared hard at the wall across the room. She wasn't the sort to just let this go.

  If he somehow managed to talk his way around it now, she'd just ask again tomorrow or the next day. She'd keep after him until she got her answers. She'd be distracted, digging for truths that would come out eventually. She was his echo. One way or another, Kade's past would get back to her. Maybe it was better that he get it out of the way.

  "My dad," he answered finally. "Him and my brother."

  "At the same time?" She touched his arm. Her fingers felt cool against his skin but the tremble had disappeared. "I'm sorry."

  "So am I," he murmured. The words tasted wry. "We got ambushed bringing supplies to a safe house. They didn't want to travel together. I told them numbers would keep us safe." And he'd been wrong.

  It should have been an easy delivery. They carried food and bottled water. They donated clothing and toys to be spread out between locations. It was a harmless run, no danger expected. Everyone should have made it home in one piece.

  He could still feel the memory of warning that tingled up his spine in the seconds before their attackers faded into sight. Small hairs stood up at the back of his neck as he relieved the sense of gathering power, like a deeply inhaled breath that sucked away the air around him. He closed his eyes when the crack of magic echoed through his mind. It didn't keep him from seeing their bodies fall again.

  Melanie shook his shoulder. An urgent note sharpened her voice. "Kade? Wherever you went, I need you to come back now. Please? I really need you. We've got company."

  He'd begun to hate those words. "Company" never meant the pleasant sort of visit he'd expect from a friend. It was a threat and a warning of impending danger. Kade's eyes snapped open, his senses sharpening to alert.

  She'd gotten impossibly close, her body pressed to his, thigh to shoulder. Her fingers tightened on his arm and loosened like a kneading cat, but
there was nothing contented about her body language.

  "I can feel it," she whispered. "I can't see them, but I feel them coming. Promise me you'll teach me how to control that. Please?"

  "Train you out of knowing when you're in trouble?" Kade rose smoothly to his feet. "Not a chance. Stay there," he added, pointing back toward her and the couch as he heard her move to follow him. "I'm just going to look around."

  "You're not leaving." Only the panic that tinged her words kept them from being a command. Despite himself, Kade smiled.

  "Not going anywhere," he promised. "Just checking the wards." He could do that from where he stood. It just took a moment's concentration and he could stretch his awareness out like a net that spanned to all the corners of the apartment at once. If he pictured it in his mind, he could see the glowing knots that allowed him and his allies to pass. He could see the strains where enemies had tried to force past his protection.

  Or where the lines had snapped completely.

  Malice looked like sanguine smoke and made his throat feel thick with the same. He cleared it, focusing on the corner where the wards had been obliterated and something — someone — pressed through.

  It took a determination the merely curious didn't have to cross wards the likes of those set up around Kade's home. When he'd first been training his powers, his father had forced him to find ways through the best he could build. Over and over again against stronger barriers. There might come a day, his father warned, when he would have to dare.

  Though the lines and symbols of a ward were invisible to the naked eye, breaking through them felt like having a white-hot brand laid against his skin. The pain sank deep and echoed down into the bone. More than one person had passed out trying to enter where they were unwelcome. Whatever lay on the other side had to be worth the suffering.

  "Remember what we practiced," he told Melanie. "If things get bad here, you can use it to get out. Go sideways and run. Find a safe place and step out. One of us will find you."

  "I'm not leaving you." She rose and came to join him, despite his command. She stole his attention. Her gaze, when he met it, was steady and fierce. "I may not want to be in the middle of this, but I'm here and it doesn't look like there's an easier way out. So, sorry, but you're stuck with me."

  Kade turned to face her completely, his faint smile returning. "I want to be stuck with you," he promised, "but I want you safe as well. Which means, if an opportunity to run comes, do it. I'll find you."

  She might have protested again, but the wards shattered in that moment. Kade felt them give like a rope unraveling. Melanie gasped at the same time and tilted sharply toward him, her hand pressed against her stomach again.

  "It's here." It, because he had no way of knowing what had come through. Man or beast, male or female, none of that mattered. He knew it came on the attack and he would fight.

  Spotting the figure wasn't hard. Though it gave off no light and probably not much heat, Kade still felt it like a flame blazing in a deep corner of the room. It made no sound as it wandered out of darkness, head down and heavy, arms hanging at its sides. Human, then, or at least shaped like a person. That came as some relief. Men could use magics against them, but at least they would escape another attack with claws and beaks.

  "We know you're here," he told it. "Show yourself and let's get this over with."

  It laughed, a raw, painful-sounding chuckle that made Kade's throat ache in sympathy. "So cold," it answered in a voice that was meant to be female. "Don't you want to know who you face?"

  "What does it matter? You won't answer honestly. Your kind never does."

  Melanie touched his shoulder, fingers curling. "Kade, wait."

  "Aren't you all the same kind, under the skin? No matter which bloodline you follow, you're all shadow-born. Shades, insubstantial. You don't count for anything," the shadow taunted.

  "If we're all the same," he reasoned, stepping toward the figure, "then you've just discounted yourself. No reason to fight at all. Why not turn around and go back where you came from?"

  The shadow tsked. "Would, but you've got something I want."

  He heard the intruder move, though he lost track of where she'd gone. Melanie had a hand fisted in his shirt again and pulled insistently.

  "Kade, I know that voice. I'm sure I do. It's on the tip of my tongue."

  "Better stick it out so he can read it." The voice came from beside them now. He'd half-turned toward it when she went on. "Too dark, too slow, too bad."

  He could count on one hand the times he'd been tossed as though he weighed nothing. Ordinarily it took someone bigger and stronger than he was to move him that way, but the lingering imprint of the blow — cold hands slapped against his chest — felt too small for that to be the case now.

  He was airborne for a moment, then crashed to the floor on his back. Something popped inside, a rib perhaps, and the answering wave of pain stole his breath. Muscles spasmed as he rolled to his side and shoved himself back to his feet.

  Before he could charge the intruder and force her out of Melanie's reach, she gasped and spoke, her voice gone high and sharp. She'd worked out the name at last and the word dripped with disbelief.

  "Noura?"

  The shadow laughed again. "Got it in one. Surprise."

  Melanie could hardly catch her breath with her heart hammering fitfully beneath her ribs. On an ordinary day, in an ordinary world, she'd have felt relief at her friend's arrival. Instead she knew something had gone horribly wrong.

  "You don't belong here," she whispered. "Noura, you can't be here."

  "But I can and I am," her co-worker insisted. She moved closer, the glint from a lamp marking her shift of focus as it reflected in her eyes. "I warned you."

  "Warned me. Warned me to whuh?" The word gusted out of her, an incomplete sound as she remembered that odd morning. We wouldn't want anyone else to get hurt. "You meant it."

  "Have I ever made an idle threat? Of course I meant it. Then and now." She paused and her expression crumpled into one of disbelief. "You didn't. Oh, you fool." That was directed toward where Kade had been thrown. "Bad enough to bring her here, but to carry the tablet with you? Did you really think we wouldn't find it? Or that you could keep her safe?" Another click of her tongue. "Pity."

  "Leave him alone." Melanie startled herself with the force of her words. She'd sounded strong just then, but in truth she felt terrified. Noura was a friend, a confidante. She had no business being here and certainly none working for them. "If you're here for the tablet, then you'll have to deal with me. I'm the one who fixed it, after all."

  "Melanie, don't." She could tell Kade was in pain by the thickness of his voice. "You're not ready to fight them."

  Noura laughed, or near enough. "Neither were you. Not much of a fight when you don't stay on your feet."

  He stood now with a barely audible grunt. "Try me again."

  Laughter echoed through the apartment. "What, you think that having a warning makes a difference? No wonder they don't use you as a bodyguard anymore."

  She moved before Melanie could twitch to interfere, a blur of movement, darker shadows within those already gray. Though her eyes had mostly adjusted to the light level Kade preferred, Melanie only found it easy to track things that moved slowly and in predictable ways.

  Nothing about Noura counted as easy to predict. Not her presence and not the speed of her attacks. Melanie heard flesh meet flesh. Kade grunted again, the shadows jumped and Noura's voice came from a dark pool across the room.

  "You're always so quick to fight, Kade. Can't we just talk?"

  "Always?" Melanie frowned into darkness. "How long have you known him? You didn't say anything to me." Then again, she hadn't said anything about working for the enemy, either. "Did you know all along? Have you been watching me?"

  "She's not who you think she is. They're using her," Kade said gruffly. "She's not your friend anymore."

  "How melodramatic," Noura's voice answered from somewhere b
ehind and to the right of Melanie. Something grazed the small of her back, a fleeting touch. The unpleasant knot in her abdomen pulsed with a chill that radiated to her fingers and made her scalp tingle.

  "Whatever gets the point across." Bodies collided again, close enough that Melanie felt the impact shudder across her skin. Noura grunted this time, a higher and softer sound than the ones Kade made. Melanie was jostled out of the way as Kade's shoulder caught her between her own and he and Noura two-stepped past, bent double and struggling to keep their grips on one another. Kade's silhouette straightened and he tossed Noura the same way she'd thrown him.

  She didn't land. The shadows enveloped her and she disappeared.

  Silence reigned for a moment, broken only by the drip of Kade's leaky sink faucet and the sound of him catching his breath.

  "She's gone?" Melanie could hardly believe the fight was over.

  "Not for long."

  True to prediction, she reappeared with a banshee's shriek. This time, she lashed out at Melanie, a fist catching her beneath the chin. Melanie's head snapped back hard enough to make her see stars.

  Then Kade thundered past her, arms full of the struggling woman. He didn't stop until they'd both hit a wall. He held her there, pinned in place by his weight.

  "I don't understand." Melanie finally found her voice and the first thing that slipped out sounded weak to her ringing ears. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, counting teeth and tasting blood but finding nothing broken or missing. She balled her hands into fists and pressed on. "If this isn't Noura, then what is she? She looks like Noura. She sounds like her."

  "I am Noura," the other woman insisted, her voice strained as she struggled. "Get your boyfriend off of me."

  The knot of anxiety pulsed in her abdomen. Melanie stepped forward without thinking. She had to save her friend. Kade was hurting her. If she let that go on—