Shadow Master: The Nightwatch Academy book 4

by Cassidy, Debbie

  The sky was filled with too many stars that seemed to wink at us conspiratorially. Like, hey, did you know? Do you see now?

  Dark shapes jutted up in the distance, black and gray in the moonlight. Buildings?

  “It’s dead,” Hyde said. “No plant life. Nothing.”

  “Is it all like this?” I asked the spy.

  He sneered at me but didn’t answer.

  “Is this why they want our world?” Hyde pondered.

  “Hey!” Harmon appeared to our left, jogging toward us.

  Athos kept pace easily.

  “You guys go off course a little?” Hyde asked.

  “No. You did,” Harmon replied.

  They joined us in staring at the dead world we’d entered.

  I crouched before the creature. “Which way?”

  He hawked and spat.

  I could have hit him. I could have hurt him, but I’d had enough of torture for one day.

  “Listen, I don’t want to hurt you again, but I will if you don’t answer my questions. Make this easy on yourself, get us where we need to be, and I give you my word, I’ll set you free.”

  “Justice, what are you doing?” Hyde admonished. “We need it.”

  I kept my eyes on the spy. “We can grab another prisoner from the camp. Someone who actually knows things.”

  The spy bristled. “I know things.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  “I do!”

  “Really?” I put on my bored expression. “I think you’re full of bullshit. I think you have no clue about anything but the tiny camp you came from.”

  His eyes blazed in anger. “I know about the bolg. I know they’re coming, and when they do, not even the mist will stop them.”

  I froze.

  “What did he say?” Hyde asked.

  Bolg … fir bolg. The violet-eyed man had mentioned the fir bolg, and Henrich had concluded they were a faction of the fomorians. The army.

  “Justice?” Hyde pressed.

  “He said an army is coming, and not even the mist will stop them.”

  “What does that mean?” Harmon demanded.

  “Answer him?”

  The creature deflated. “I don’t know. I overheard soldiers talking.”

  I locked gazes with the creature. “Which way?”

  He tore his gaze from mine and pointed northeast.

  “Give me the lead, please.” I held my hand out to Hyde.

  He passed me the leather strap that was attached to our reluctant guide. The creature looked up at me in fear as I wrapped the end around my hand.

  “What’s your name?”

  He blinked in surprise. “Name?”

  “Yes, what do they call you?”

  “Grunt … spy …” He looked at me warily.

  He didn’t have a name. “What about your mother?”

  He frowned. “No mother. I just am.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  It made no sense. “He says he doesn’t have a mother, that he just is.” What the hell did that even mean? “Pick a name.”

  The creature’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “Hurry up.”

  His eyes flicked from side to side, and his fingers went to his mouth in agitation. “Valmik,” he said. “I am Valmik.” He grinned, showcasing two rows of small, pointy teeth that made me want to shudder.

  “Fine. Valmik. Lead the way.”

  He nodded and then burst forward, tugging on the leash and leading us northeast.

  Brady. I’m on my way.

  Fourteen

  Twisted black trees, winding grooves of land that had probably once been filled with water, thistles and boulders and more dead land made up our journey. Harmon and Athos seemed to be in their element. They moved fast and easily, as if the fomorian air gave them extra energy.

  I could feel it too.

  There was a thrum in my veins that hadn’t been there on the other side of the mist. There was a strange energy churning in my breast above my solar plexus where the reassuring knot of warmth that signified my weaver thread sat.

  We were making excellent time. The buildings in the distance took form. Ruined, blackened towers kissed by starlight. There had been a city once, civilization. But no longer. This world was a world ravaged. A world destroyed, and Brady was somewhere here. The ground rose up ahead.

  I yanked on the leash. “How much farther?”

  “Camp is over the rise,” Valmik said reluctantly.

  I looked at Hyde. “We need to find something to gag him with.”

  Hyde pulled a blade from his thigh holster. “We can use the leash.”

  I held it out, and he cut a strip which he used to gag Valmik. The creature looked at me accusingly the whole time.

  “What? Like you wouldn’t scream for help as soon as we got close.”

  His lip curled above the gag in his mouth.

  “Yeah, thought as much.”

  We climbed, keeping low to the ground. The rise was steep, and thistles and twisted brush greeted us at the top. It was the perfect cover from which to survey the camp below.

  Several fires burned bright in the clearing on the other side of the rise, and I counted five tents. How many men to a tent? The fomorians were large, and the tents weren’t. Two men per tent, maybe? This camp was smaller than I’d anticipated.

  Would they keep Brady here? My gut told me no, but I needed to be sure.

  “We circle to the left,” Hyde said.

  I followed his gaze to the sparse forest that covered the rise to the left. The woodland trailed down to the edge of the clearing. The fires were on the other side of camp, leaving the forest in darkness. We’d have plenty of cover.

  I nodded. “There can’t be more than ten men down there, at the most. We take out one tent at a time and even the odds as fast as we can.”

  “Let’s do it,” Harmon said.

  We skulked toward the forest and then dove in. Athos moved stealthily to my left, and Hyde and Harmon made up the rear. Harmon was silent and quick despite his size, moving between the trees like a pro.

  The smell of wood smoke and meat drifted toward us, accompanied by the sound of conversation. This was their downtime. They wouldn’t see us coming.

  I drew my weapon, reveling in the glint of the blade. Valmik was still on the other end of the leash, the gag tight around his mouth.

  I was ready to cut and slice. Ready to fight. The nearest tent was about two meters from the forest.

  We could do this.

  A sharp crack cut through the silence.

  Athos growled in warning, and then a bolt whizzed through the air, hitting its mark with a thunk.

  Hyde’s bellow twisted my insides. I ran toward him as he hit the ground with his knees, an arrow buried in his shoulder.

  Whizz, whoosh.

  “Get down!” I dragged Hyde to the cover of a tree. “Harmon, Athos. Get out of here.”

  Fuck! I’d let go of the leash. Valmik ran through the trees, making a moaning sound around his gag. Hulking shadows slipped out from cover. Had they been there all along?

  Harmon roared and attacked. Athos leaped and took one down.

  “Run,” Hyde said to me.

  “Like hell.”

  I stood, ready to fight. Harmon grappled with a figure dressed in furs. Athos tore into another. I took a step forward, ready to join the party, but more shadows poured into the forest.

  Harmon went down hard.

  “Justice. Go!” Hyde said.

  But it was too late. We were surrounded.

  * * *

  They’d separated us. Hyde and I in one cage and Harmon and Athos in another. Harmon had spent the first five minutes trying to bend his bars to get free. But the metal was something new. Something indestructible. The cages were solid. Impossible for even Harmon and Athos to break free from.

  I could see my friends through the flickering flames of the fire that sat between our cages. Harmon sat hunched close to the bars
, his gaze tracking the fomorians that held us captive. Athos was in the shadows, his red-rimmed eye whites gleaming in the gloom.

  Seven fomorians in total were at this camp, but these two, Squat and Wiry, as I’d named them in my head, were the ones in charge.

  They’d barked orders and sent the others retreating to their tents. It was just us and them now, and the way they kept looking at me … Unease slid up my spine and pooled like ice at my nape.

  What were the chances of us getting out of this fucking mess? Low, but not impossible. I refused to lose hope, even though the pit in my gut argued otherwise.

  I looked to Hyde. His eyes were closed, his face etched in pain. He was too pale from blood loss. That bastard had ripped off his breastplate and broken off the arrow, leaving the head in his shoulder. He wouldn’t be able to heal like this. I needed to cut the arrow out, to bind it, but they’d taken our weapons. There was nothing I could do for him right this minute, but I could get a message to base. I needed to contact Kash.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the ball of heat at my solar plexus. The darkness took me to the weave.

  “Kash!” My voice was snatched away, gone too soon. “Kash!” This time it echoed in the darkness.

  A figure materialized in front of me, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and solid.

  “Kash.” I grabbed hold of his hands. “We’re in trouble. We’ve been captured.”

  “Fuck, Justice—”

  “Listen to me, I’m going to try and get out of this mess, but if I can’t … If I don’t make contact in the next few hours, you need to let Lloyd know. You need to tell him I appoint him the Shadow Master.”

  Something tugged at my subconscious, an urgency that needled me, warning me to go back.

  “I have to go.” I released him.

  “No. Indig—”

  But I was hurtling away from the weave, back to the cage. My senses snapped on and tuned in to the words my subconscious had alerted me to.

  “They’re getting bold,” the fomorian closest to our cage said.

  “Desperate more like,” his comrade replied.

  “Doesn’t matter. They won’t come back from the blow Laramir orchestrated. The bolg will be here in less than a week, collecting fighters from the other camps as they come, and then we’ll storm the mists.”

  “How many? Do you know?” the wiry one asked.

  “I heard a thousand strong.”

  “I got a cousin who’s bolg,” wiry said.

  “Liar.”

  “No, it’s true. On my mother’s side. They bred the fomorian out of him, pure fir bolg now. He’s a general.”

  “You think Laramir will give us a reward for catching the fomori-tainted?” squat pondered.

  They peered into the cage, their gazes snagging on me.

  “I think we already got one,” wiry said. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  The squat guy’s eyes lit up.

  “Been a while since I fucked,” wiry said.

  His companion shoved him hard. “I get to go first.”

  The wiry one groaned. “You always break ‘em.”

  The ice at my nape had taken over my body now.

  Harmon and Athos went nuts in the cage opposite. They knew what the fomorians intended to do. They understood their words, or in Harmon’s case, their intent.

  “What is it?” Hyde asked.

  I shook my head sharply.

  “Justice, what did they say?” Hyde whisper-hissed.

  The lock on the cage jangled. I had nothing to defend myself with except my fists. I was strong, I was fast, but I wouldn’t last long against these two without a weapon.

  I locked gazes with Hyde. “Don’t look. Promise me you won’t look.”

  “Indigo?”

  The cage door flew open, and the squat fomorian reached for me.

  Hyde’s eyes flared in comprehension. “No!” He lunged, and in one fluid motion, yanked the arrow from his shoulder and stabbed the fomorian in the eye.

  The fomorian let out a high-pitched scream and staggered back.

  “You die.” His companion made a grab at Hyde.

  Hyde was barely conscious after tearing the arrowhead from his body.

  I shuffled forward. “Leave him alone! Just take me.”

  I tried to crawl over Hyde, to make my way out, to let them have me. But Hyde shoved me back.

  “I love you, Indigo,” he said.

  And then he was being hauled out of the cage and dragged across the ground.

  “Fucking bastards!” Harmon bellowed. “Let me out. Try taking me down, you bastard.”

  The fomorians ignored him, their attention on Hyde.

  He lay on the ground, chest heaving, his feytech skin soaked in blood.

  The guy with the bloody eye crouched by Hyde’s body.

  “Don’t. Please, don’t!” I pushed my arms through the bars, begging, pleading with them.

  The wiry one looked up and bared his teeth before plunging his dagger into Hyde’s shoulder in the same spot as the arrow wound.

  Hyde’s scream ripped through my soul.

  “Stop! Stop it! Just take me instead.”

  “Lift him up. Let the woman watch,” the wiry one said. “It’ll soften her for later.”

  The guy with the bloody eye grunted in agreement, and together, they hauled a barely conscious Hyde to his feet.

  My body quivered, and my eyes heated. “Stop it, you fucking bastards. Take me. Fight me.”

  They ignored me, lifting Hyde so he stood braced between them, his head drooping.

  “Hyde …” My voice cracked on a sob.

  There was nothing I could do. I was powerless, trapped. The impotence clawed at my psyche.

  Hyde raised his head and locked gazes with me. “Don’t look.” His voice was thready and weak.

  The wiry guy produced a blade, flipped it in his hand, and then plunged it into Hyde’s gut.

  My scream rocked the night, and the edges of my vision darkened. Rage, potent but helpless, flooded me. I gripped the bars and shook them, screaming again and again in time with the stabs. In time to the tear of Hyde’s flesh.

  They were killing him. Killing him …

  The wiry guy pulled back his arm, ready to stab once more, then froze. There was something protruding out of his head.

  There was an arrow in the center of his head.

  Fifteen

  The man with the arrow in his head dropped like a stone.

  His companion let out a cry of alarm that was cut off by an arrow through his mouth.

  They fell, taking Hyde with them, and then the camp broke out in a cacophony of commotion.

  Figures poured into the clearing. Arrows whizzed, and swords slashed. The fomorians of the camp were larger than their attackers, but they were also outnumbered. Taken by surprise, they fell within minutes.

  The attackers milled about looking shell-shocked, as if they couldn’t believe their luck.

  I rattled the bars. “Hey! Let me out. I have to … I have to help him.” My vision was blurred with tears, my voice choked from the phantom hands squeezing my throat.

  Two of the newcomers crouched by Hyde’s body.

  “Hey! Please!”

  “Open the fucking cage!” Harmon shook the bars to his prison.

  One of the newcomers rose and strode to my cage. His brown eyes were kind.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Please, let me out. Can you understand me?”

  “I understand you. Unfortunately, you won’t understand me. Your friend is dead.”

  “No, he isn’t, he can’t be.”

  The man looked shocked by my response.

  “Let me out.” I shook the bars. “I’ll explain, but you need to let me out.”

  He pulled an ax from his back and slammed it down on the padlock. The door sprang open, and I pushed past him and fell to the ground by Hyde.

  He was silent.

  Pale.

  Not breathing.

&nbs
p; Dead.

  “NO!” I pressed my hands to his bloody torso. “No. You can’t go. I won’t let you. I won’t.”

  I felt it then, the flicker of life, the thready beat of a dying pulse. He was still alive. There was still hope. I had to do something. I needed to close the wound. My hands heated with power and shadows rushed to meet me; they wound around my arms and then shot down to my hands before spreading across Hyde’s abdomen. My head pulsed, and my body vibrated. Idiot. Damn fool. I should have called them sooner. I should have …

  Focus. Channel.

  That voice again.

  Focus.

  I channeled my will into my hands and further into Hyde. “Live, you have to live.”

  “What is this? What is she?”

  “Watch … look at his face. The color is returning.”

  “You’re doing it,” Harmon called. “Indie, you’re doing it.”

  “What is that?” someone else asked.

  But my focus was on Hyde, on holding on to the thread of life, of pushing it back into his body.

  His chest moved beneath me in a breath, and then his eyes snapped open. His gaze fixed on me.

  “Don’t look …”

  His eyelids fluttered closed, and the shadows slid off his body. He was bloody, wounded, but the wounds were shallower. Partially healed.

  “I need medicine.” I looked up at the man with the kind brown eyes. “Bandages.”

  Darkness licked at the edges of my vision.

  “He needs to …” The world swayed.

  Hands grabbed me. “We need to get out of here,” the man said. “We can help, but you must come with us.”

  They’d killed the fomorians who’d captured us. They’d got here in the nick of time. That was all the information I had to go on, but what choice did we have? Hyde was injured …

  “We’ll come with you.”

  * * *

  We set up camp by an outcrop of rocks several miles from the fomorian camp. The journey had been an hour’s trek with Athos carrying Hyde. We’d strapped him onto the hound’s back using rope provided by our saviors. It was obvious now that there were factions even on this side of the mist. These fomorians were different from the ones who’d hurt Hyde, the ones who’d wanted to violate me.