Azrael examined the wall, extending in all directions between them. He had tried before to break it down by force, to batter it with will and power. Now he placed his hands on it, felt the energy coursing under his palms, and listened closely to the way it flowed. He heard the sound of the weaving that created it and, after a moment, sensed the slight ripple of a gap. He sought out that opening, thrusting his awareness through the break in the weave. Like a snag in a scarf, he plucked at the loose threads until they began to unravel. Finally the hole was big enough to slide through.
The prudent thing to do would be to break down the wall entirely or bring the spirit to him. But it would also take more time, and they didn’t have that. Already he sensed movement around the edges of the summoning and sent a warning to his guard.
He dove in head first, sending himself through the space.
On the other side was a room identical to the one his physical self occupied. He sent his awareness backward in time, watching the contents of the room reset to how it had been, before the carnage. Havel Zeman moved around his aedis, a book of magic open on the center counter as he assembled his spell. The book itself was a masterpiece. Azrael possessed only a few grimoires so old and none in such immaculate condition. He wondered briefly where Zeman had come upon something like this. Most of the oldest books were in the hands of the allegiance.
Zeman looked up, his attention caught by something just over Azrael’s shoulder. Azrael spun, but there was nothing behind him but the wall, the loose threads and rapidly growing hole, waving in an unfelt breeze.
When he turned back, Zeman was inches from his face. Azrael flinched. The dead rarely acknowledged him until he brought himself to their attention. Zeman was clearly waiting for him. The old man’s mouth moved, but only the dull roar of white noise came out. Azrael tried to read his lips even as he twisted his power in an attempt to bring the white noise into some semblance of a voice.
“The Queen of Diamonds,” Zeman’s static resolved in broken bits. “Cuts with a blade of ice—”
At a familiar shout, Azrael looked behind him again. He turned back just in time to see the old man’s face contort into something inhuman. Broad, spiral horns sprouted from his brows, and in his clenched fist was a knife, gleaming gold with a serrated blade. Azrael had enough time to bring up a guard so that the knife caught him in the ribs instead of the heart.
Agony radiated from the blade’s point of entry. He had known pain before but none that rendered him so entirely useless. His body arced as his head rocked back, leaving him vulnerable. An old memory came to him: his mentor’s voice as he prepared for his first journey into the In Between.
“Remember, Goat Boy”—the nickname lacked the derision it had once held—“what happens there echoes into this plane.”
“You mean if I die there—”
“I will raise a pyre for your body.”
Azrael screamed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Isela gasped at the flash of gold. This time she didn’t flinch, and it darted forward. They danced together, she and her sparking shadow, and the memories of the blood-drenched room and ruined flesh faded away. She laughed, twisting with joy.
And then it touched her.
A shock raced through her system. Her heart froze for a few beats too long, then jumped to restart. The shock brought her out of her bubble and into the knowledge that something was very, very wrong.
The room was dark, the only light seeming to come from Azrael’s body. The rich glimmering around the edges of his skin and hair cast the room in an emerald glow. He stood stiffly, his eyes fixed on some unseen point. A flicker of a shadow across the room caught her eye.
“Gregor?” she whispered, instinctively reaching for her blade.
She made out a shape forming as the shadow became something out of a nightmare. She screamed Azrael’s name—a warning—and everything went wrong.
Azrael grunted, and folded at the waist. He went down to one knee with a groaning cry. The shadow slid from the wall into physical form. It had the shape of an impossible four-legged beast; the combination of features unnatural and terrifying. Its horned, canine head swung toward the necromancer. Without thinking, she sprang from her circle, blade in hand. The thing that had been shadow leaped at Azrael. She rolled, sliding beneath it across the blood-slicked floor, and felt the blade connect. The blade turned to ice in her hand, clattering to the ground. The grotesque shadow emitted an inhuman shriek, buckling midleap and wheeled away from its target.
It stumbled across the room on its haunches, trailing black, viscous liquid that turned to vapor and dissolved. She crouched beside Azrael, tearing her eyes off the creature to frantically search his face. Her left hand ached all the way to the elbow, but she was too busy feeling his body for injury to register her own pain. At his ribs, something warm and wet filled her palm. When she withdrew her hand, it was slick with blood. From the walls of the room around them, more unnaturally shaped shadows began to coalesce, wrinkling with their own movement.
“Gregor!” She shouted for help.
On the other side of the door, thumping and howling was her only response. Her hand encountered the hilt of a blade tucked into Azrael’s coat, and she drew it to replace her missing one.
His eyes flickered open, silver meeting gray with a look of such surprise, her stomach dropped. “Isela?”
She focused on the creature.
The wounded shadow snarled and paced but stayed out of her reach as she brandished the borrowed blade, moving to a crouch over Azrael. Her hip burned with the effort. She braced one knee on the floor.
The door behind them exploded, and Gregor strode through in a swath of light. At the sight of her—crouched over Azrael with blood on one hand and a knife in the other—Gregor’s expression changed from concern to kill.
Great, of course he thought she stabbed Azrael.
She had just a moment to point her knife behind him and manage a garbled warning before another one of the shadow grotesques leaped into corporeal form at his back.
Gregor ducked, spinning faster than anything mortal could have. He drew a black sword from the sheath on his back before it had fully formed from a coalescence of curling smoke. The partially translucent sword proved solid enough; he caught the creature on the backswing, severing it in half.
The first grotesque renewed its attack. Solid now, Gregor’s black blade came down again, severing its horned head. While Isela froze, Azrael dragged himself to one knee and pushed her behind him. In his bloodied hand was something that looked like an emerald the size of a fist. It glowed so brightly her eyes stung. He flung it past her, and an inhuman shrieking filled the space as emerald light bathed the room in sparks.
The gold shape flickered in the corner of her eye, and Isela shouted a warning. Gregor met the creature with the 9mm that had appeared in his free hand, emptying a clip in its spiral-horned head. She darted across the room to her bag, fighting the urge to curl up into a ball until it was all over.
She looked at Azrael. He was fighting, but even she could see the wound taking a toll. For every one they killed between them, there were two more. Three more bled through the walls into form as she watched. Where were the others?
Azrael met her eyes, his back to the center island, breath coming in gasps that betrayed how much pain he was in. He mouthed a single word. “Run.”
She froze as if bolted to the floor. His mouth set in a line, and she felt a jolt of something hot and energizing burst into her chest. He pointed his palm at her. The command replaced her fear.
Run.
She grabbed Gregor’s coat from her bag and sprinted for the door.
Outside the room, she knew immediately why no one had come to her aid sooner. Lysippe, Rory, and Dory battled a rising wave of the same shadow grotesques alongside the Viking and a pair of fighters she didn’t recognize. She leaped over the big blood puddle, heel skittering at the edge, and paused, trying to find a path as Azrael’s command pulsed th
rough her.
Lysippe fought to Isela’s side. “With me.”
The shadows crowded the room, books and shelves flying in the conflict. Lysippe led, cutting through the fray. Rory and Dory, she noted, were using their bare hands and machetes the size of her thigh, twisting horned heads and chopping necks fearlessly, but Azrael’s forces were outnumbered. As long as there were shadows, there were fresh creatures to fight. Lysippe got tangled up in a two-headed, frog-shaped shadow with a scorpion tail, but Isela saw her opening.
She ran for it. Outside the front door, she paused, breathing. The faint sound of combat coming from inside reached her on the pavement: flashes of light punctuated by gunfire and the occasional inhuman roar of a dying creature. She stumbled backward, away from the violence. She didn’t belong in there; this world wasn’t hers.
The door opened a crack, strained against its hinges by an ebon, snarling, pig snout. The nostrils flared as it scented her. Isela fisted her hand in the coat over the rectangular Audi key. She skidded across the frozen cobblestones, clicking the lock as the shadow pushed hard enough to twist the hinges and shatter the glass in the door. It clambered behind her.
She flung herself into the passenger side, slamming the door shut as the shadow hit the car with a solid thud. The car rocked, then went still. The scrape of nails on the chassis and glass as it searched for entry made her skin prickle.
She maneuvered into the driver’s seat, searching frantically. Too many dials and not a key slot in sight. The car rocked again as the grotesque bashed into it repeatedly, circling the car.
Isela pounded the dash when she realized the rectangular fob that had opened the doors didn’t even have a key.
“Start godsdammit!”
The car came to life with a roar. The lights flashed, illuminating the dashboard. The center screen flared. Ignoring the polite, female voice that greeted, “Herr Schwarz,” Isela put the car in reverse and slammed on the gas. The back bumper connected with something solid that gave a shrieking howl. The pig-nosed shadow skidded across the hood, reflection-less eyes meeting hers for one hungry second as it jawed the windshield wiper. She found first gear and yanked the wheel away from the curb.
She hit the gas, and the force drove the creature sideways, sending it scrabbling off the hood. The car arrowed down the street, fishtailing, before its wheels steadied in the slush. She checked the mirror; the thing was on its feet, yowling, before giving chase. She upshifted and whipped around the corner.
Isela hadn’t been behind the wheel in years—there was no reason to in a city with this much public transport—and this car wasn’t the average sedan. The car lunged at the slightest touch on the gas, wheels sliding in the snow. At least the brakes were good, she considered, as it dropped speed sharply for her quick turn down a narrow side street.
She heard gears grind as she struggled for third, then it bucked and gained speed again. It didn’t help that her left hand was growing numb from the elbow down. She buckled her seat belt.
She slammed on the brakes as the street dead-ended into a construction zone. She checked the mirror as one of the two grotesques slid to a stop at the open end of the street. It looked bigger out in the open, more savage. It had to be the size of a full-grown bull. Had it always had a tail with a stinger, or was that new?
It lowered its horned head, shaking it.
“Toro yourself, motherfucker.” Isela slammed the car in reverse and hit the gas.
They met with a sickening crunch. She gasped as her body jerked against the seat belt robbing her of breath. Still, she kept her foot on the gas and felt the car’s rear end lift slightly against the resistance.
“Come on, Gregor,” she begged. “Tell me you didn’t skimp on power.”
The car began to force its way backward. As soon as she was in the intersection, she jerked the wheel, shifted, and hit the gas again. When she checked her mirror, the grotesque was gone. Isela made her way up the road toward the old fortress, the snowy streets untouched by tracks from lack of traffic. She missed the turn and had to double back. The engine gave an unhealthy rattle when she upshifted again. As she came around the fortress, she allowed herself to pick up a little speed, pushing into the curve.
The car hit a patch of ice, and the steering wheel slipped loose of her numb left fingers. Spinning out of control, the Audi jumped the barrier and tumbled down the hill. Isela lost consciousness surrounded by the rippling fabric of airbags.
She came to upside down, hanging from her seat belt, and trying to remember her own name. The only thing that was perfectly clear was Azrael’s command compelling her to motion.
Run.
She scrambled out of her seat belt, dropping to the roof of the car. Using the folded sleeve of the coat wrapped around her arm, she cleared the window of broken glass. Grunting with effort, she dragged herself out into the snow, pausing on her back to look at the ruin of the coupé.
Keep moving, she told herself, rising to her hands and knees, then working her legs beneath her.
The bushes at the top of the hill rustled. A pair of animal eyes shone in the headlights before vanishing in a flash of white and gray fur. She thought it was a dog. A big one. A little sob caught in her throat.
“Time to go, Issy, move your ass,” she commanded.
She left the car in the ditch, climbing up and trying to orient herself. She was near the entrance to the fortress. To the right was an old canal turned walkway. She had spent enough time here as a child to know it led down to the river. If she could get to the river, she could follow the road and catch a tram.
She started to walk. Her hip burned as adrenaline cooled, sending shooting pain down her leg, and her left hand was numb below the elbow, but she forced herself to move faster. The darkness was complete, broken only by the occasional streetlamp casting circles of light in the snow. Mist curled off the ground, thickening to a low, hovering fog. She realized she was not alone when the bushes to her left rattled. The movement sounded like an animal. She leaped away, picking up her pace and dropping her remaining blade into her right hand.
The cold began to seep into her clothes—the light-soled dance shoes and leggings providing no barrier against the ice. Shivering, she forced herself on. Or the animal forced her. Every time she slowed, there would be motion from the darkness, the sound of paws in snow. She was being herded, she realized, through the park and to the hill on the east side of the fortress. Nothing showed itself, but she knew it wasn’t the creature from the bookstore, or she would have been dead.
Faltering now with pain and cold, she fought her way down the hill, oblivious to where she was going, only knowing that she had to keep moving.
“Run,” he’d said.
Azrael, the most feared necromancer in Europe, had told her to run. Her chest clenched at the thought of him, bloodied and fighting for his life. And when everything went bad, he tried to get her to safety.
Whatever power he had infused faded with her body heat. She tripped and came down hard on one knee, sobbing as pain reverberated up her leg into her hip. Something brushed her side, big and furred with a musky animal scent, disappearing into the dark. She lurched to her feet, brandishing the blade. Had she seen a tail whip before vanishing into the shadows?
Nothing came.
She limped on, moving downhill now, barely sentient. She saw a flicker of gold out of the corner of her eye and spun on one heel, sliding in the snow and falling backward as the solid, lightless mass of the shadow grotesque passed where she had been standing. One taloned hoof slapped her as she fell, sending her skidding sideways in a snowdrift. She lurched to her hands and knees as it tumbled to the ground opposite her and rolled to its feet.
Its front hoof dangled, the scorpion tail broken and dragging. An oily liquid, which she assumed was blood, seeped from its side, melting snow before vaporizing into the growing fog.
Her left arm gave, and she slid to her elbow, right arm extended.
“Come on, you ugly son of a bitch
,” she snarled, coiling her legs to lurch away.
The grotesque swung its head at her and gibbered. It lowered its horns.
A second blur of fur and snarls charged from the undergrowth. It was too big to be a dog, and its shaggy coat was silver gray, fringed with longer black guard hairs. Against the shadow monster, it looked like a paltry thing. But it hooked onto the bigger creature’s lower jaw, shaking its head with a bone-snapping fury.
The grotesque howled, spinning as it tried to dislodge its new opponent.
A second animal came from behind, leaping on to the shadow’s back and biting savagely at the neck.
Her frozen brain stumbled over the visuals she was receiving—wolves—in the Vysehrad Park? On her knees, she stared, unable to move, as the two smaller, fiercer beasts tore into their larger opponent.
Then a third wolf, white and gray, appeared in front of her. It stared at her with big, glaucous eyes that weren’t very wolflike at all and snapped its jaws.
Isela got the hint. Summoning one last burst of strength, she stumbled away, breaking into a lurching run. She felt the pale wolf keeping pace; its thick coat pressing against her leg. She stumbled once, reached out, and found its shoulder under her hand, bracing her. The smell of animal—earth and musk—was thick but not unpleasant. She tumbled down the hill, bursting through the trees alone on a street that was suddenly familiar. She was home.
She spun; the wolf was gone.
Under the streetlamps, the neighborhood was quiet. She felt the tears coming, even as she limped down the street to the familiar art nouveau façade. The front door opened, bathing the sidewalk in a square of light so soft and warm she wanted to lie down in it and sleep. Instead, she picked up her speed, hurtling her body forward out of the darkness and into her mother’s arms.
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