Ink and Shadows (40 page)

“How’s he doing?” Min reached over to grab at Mal’s leg, using the Horseman’s heavier weight to pull her across the slick floor.

Mal swallowed, fear closing his throat. Patting at the youngest’s chest, Min shook her head and mumbled, resting her head on the fluffy doormat Mal had purchased for their home, an object of derision at the time but now a soft comfort to her aching head. “He’ll be fine, Mal. Just give him some time to heal. Hell, he took on a wraith. He can survive one bullet. Even you survived that, and you suck.”

T
HIS
WHOLE
mess started with a book, Beckett thought. A woman and a book.

Before he’d found Faith staring back at him from the shadows, he’d nearly given up ever truly understanding the world behind the curtain placed over his own. The Veil was a magician’s trick, the ultimate smoke and mirrors of illusion and sleight of hand. She’d shown him the truth of her world. Now the woman who held his heart and hand as she led him through the final corridors of comprehension was gone, a wisp of nothingness caught on his breath.

It was a small, unassuming book, but it held so much. The words nearly glowed off the page, written in a gold-tinted ink beside spidery black print scrawled over thin sheets of pulp paper. Faith told him the text had been dismissed as the ramblings of a madman, but Beckett found the words fascinating.

She was gone, leaving the book she’d given him behind. The pages would be a small comfort to him. Faith’s betrayal laid ashes on his tongue and heart. His heart ached, refusing to give up his love for the immortal.

Wild with grief, the magus ran his hands deep into the pools of blood on the floor, smearing the drying liquid around him. Carving waves of circles with his trembling fingers, Beckett reached inside of himself, tapping into the electrical spark of his power. Already on the brink of madness, his grief pushed him further into the abyss, tapping the unending well of dark every human possessed. The shadows shivering against the corners of the foyer trembled with the forceful emotions crawling out of Beckett’s soul. Steeped in the Horsemen’s essence, they swarmed, called to the magus’s summoning.

“You are going to die.” Beckett raised his bloodied hands.

Tilting his head back, the magus gathered the threads of the summoning spell, drawing the shadows together into a single entity. The darkness shuddered, a hushed murmuring as the animalistic wraiths were forced together, a hive mind growing under the magus’s purposeful intent.

Charity knew the feel of the Veil. Intimate with the shadows’ movements, he felt the stirrings of the magus’s summons pull at his body. Giving in to the human’s power, Charity let his grief bolster him. A slow agony crawled along his marrow, his bones twisting under Beckett’s magic.

“Hurry, Beckett,” Charity urged him. “The darkfae are either dead or run off. Death and War will be coming for us.”

“They’ll never reach us.” Concentrating, Beckett scraped at the darkness, trying to build the shadows around him. Charity’s strength fueled his efforts. The immortal’s skin dripped black, drops of inky blood striking the floor. The liquid shimmered, vibrating, then slithered, flattening out into a film over the floor. “Go wait by the elevator, Charity. We’ll need a quick escape once the summoning is done.”

“I am still here.” A darkfae stepped out from the shadows, closing the stairwell door behind him. His armor shone dully as he stepped into the light, worn and ancient ill-fitting pieces dented from past battles, but his sword threw off a wicked gleam, its sharpened edge glinting dangerously. A silver ring swung from the tip of his ear, swaying back and forth with each step he took toward the Horsemen. “I will be the one to take home a Horseman’s head for my clan’s hall. The dead shall weep in their hell when I send the Four’s souls to their side, and they will mourn leaving me behind to guard their sorry backsides when I could have been the one to take them to glory.”

Driven by bloodlust, the last darkfae roared in defiance at War. Bringing his head down, the male charged, leading with the long tusks jutting out from the corners of his flat mouth. Ari waited for him, drawing him back with a side step, careful not to leave an opening for the creature to slip through. The younger Horsemen and the human lay nearly unmoving a few feet beyond, Min worn down to the bone.

He wouldn’t risk them. As far as he was concerned, the creature wouldn’t make it a footstep past him. As the darkfae brought his blade around, Ari grinned at the feel of meat giving way under his plunging strike, gleeful with the bliss he felt in the hot gush of fluids spurting over his forearm. In the thick of a fight, he reveled in the carnage, drops of blood burning his eyesight. He felt alive with Death beside him and death around him.

Aiming deep into the darkfae’s body, Death twisted the blade up into the creature’s chest. The edge nicked a rib, splintering the bone into the lung sac below. A gurgling froth pinked over his opponent’s mouth, foaming around his tusk roots. Gasping, the darkfae struggled to pull air into his chest when Death pulled the blade back and stabbed again. The tip of the weapon found the soft meat of the creature’s heart, buried deep in its broad chest. Death’s bicep ached with the effort of shoving through the heavy muscle, the close-in work leeching his stamina. Repeatedly, the immortal worked the same opening, obscenely splaying the wound apart with a detached viciousness.

Ari winked at his oldest friend and sliced deep into the darkfae’s side, severing his spine. Licking at the drops around his mouth, his soul hummed, rolling in the dusting of Veil settling over them. Imbued with his calling, the minor wraiths fed heartily on the fallen at the Horsemen’s feet, anticipating the other creature to join in the littering of corpses on the foyer floor.

Leaning his head back, Ari spread his arms out wide, letting the shower of fluids wash over his face and chest. Clenching the blade in his fist, he opened his hand, splaying his fingers apart to catch the final dash of drops on his palm. Mouth slightly parted, he filled his lungs with the scent of sweat and blood, letting the perfume pour into his being. A final thrust, and the darkfae lay still, a crumbled pile of meat at Ari’s heels.

“Gods, that was fun!” Ari turned to look at Death, his face nearly masked with drying and fresh blood. Long shanks of blond hair matted dark on the man’s jaw, clinging to the strong column of his neck. Shaking the loose drops free, he splattered Death’s face.

“War,” Death reproached, running his thumb over his lips, trying to clean his mouth off.

Reaching out, Ari wiped at Death’s face with the back of his hand, a quirky smile on his face. “There. You’re all pretty again.”

“Guys, when you two are done congratulating yourselves.” Min propped herself up on her elbows, her breath still coming in short pants. Jerking her head toward the magus, the woman pointed to the clustered shadows feeding on the darkfae remains around Beckett’s bent body. “I think we’ve got another problem.”

“What’s going on?” Mal strained to see around the Horsemen’s legs. The rise and fall of Kismet’s chest evened out, a reassuring slow intake of air. His face flushed with color, the artist murmured with discomfort when Mal slid his hands under Kismet’s armpits. With Beckett drawing on the thin curtain of the Veil, Kismet was left naked and raw, vulnerable to the intrusive, ravenous wraiths attracted by the intense fighting.

“Hey.” Kismet stirred in the crook of Mal’s arm. The pain stole his breath, razored pangs jabbing through his chest and ribs. His voice husky and groggy, the artist attempted a smile, his eyes sharp with agony. Driven back from blood loss, the craving for drugs crawled on broken knees through his body. Kismet swallowed, rasping carefully around the dryness on his tongue. “Did you guys win?”

“Shit, we should move them if you’re thinking about keeping them alive, Shi,” Ari grumbled.

“We haven’t won yet, Kismet,” Death said. “It would be better if they stayed where they are, Ari. We can’t defend multiple locations. The wraith will be able to get through the walls to get to them.”

“Defend against what?” Mal heard the human in the foyer mumbling, long strings of disconnected words blended harsh with guttural pleadings. “What is he doing?”

“He’s calling a wraith or something, Pest,” Ari said. Shifting his grip around the hilt of his dagger, he shook the blood from his arm. “Like he hasn’t caused enough trouble.”

The Veil convulsed around the magus, jerking the last wave of burgeoning wraiths into the growing bundle of darkness welling up near his clenched hands. The darkfae’s blood dried pitch on his palms, cracking as he made fists to slam into the floor. Pouring the last of his rage into his creation, Beckett summoned the creature from the darkness, its mind focused on a single thought—killing everyone in its sight.

“Didn’t we just have a wraith thing?” Kismet asked. His head pounded in an unsteady rhythm, an insistent knocking on the inside of his skull. His skin itched where Mal’s fingers had probed at the bullet, the entrance stretched wide by the Horseman’s invasion. Nothing remained of the hole, his body healing over the wound. “How many of these things can he make?”

“As many as he wants.” Death pursed his mouth. “There’s enough blood and Veiled flesh here for him to call something big.”

“Okay.” Kismet coughed, a clot throwing inside of his lung. He choked on the obstruction, spitting his airway clear. Swallowing the metallic taste, Kismet rubbed the flat of his tongue against his teeth. “A wraith like the one that chewed on me? And we’re going to sit here and let him kill us?”

“We’re immortals, Kismet, not human. We have to obey different rules.” Death’s face was a sheet of poured ice, slashed dark with his grimly set mouth and narrowed eyes. “We can’t move against any human unless we’re attacked directly. Summoning isn’t a direct attack. We can’t touch him.”

Beckett no longer saw the Horsemen or the carnage around him, his focus tight on the growing mass of shadows writhing to take form. The sheet of water behind the magus splashed free of its stone basin, a fallen darkfae’s arm partially blocking the drain. Tinted red with blood, the liquid wove into slow-moving rivulets, working around the mountains of shorn flesh in its path. Ari shifted his feet, testing the slickness of the polished wood floor.

“Hold on to this, Mal. You’ve probably dulled your knife on your human, and it’s got a better reach.” Min put a long blade into Mal’s hand, stolen from under a darkfae’s torn apart body. “Use it to protect yourself, just in case.”

Mal nodded mutely, the large weapon an unfamiliar heft in his palm. The wider hilt was difficult to encompass in his hand, forged for the dead darkfae draining onto the foyer floor. Long strings of shadows poured from the cool stairwell, drawn by Beckett’s call. The promise of a feeding lured miniscule wraiths from their protective swarms, the magus’s pain cast as bait into the still air.

Out in the middle of the floor, Beckett squatted alone, his clothes slowly soaking up fluids. Power poured into the dragged circle around him, pulling every tendril of darkness infused with an inkling of will into the forming creature before him. The magus’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, the whites nearly red with bloodshot veins.

Charity stepped back from the human, giving him room to work his magics. His eyes burned with tears, and the emptiness in his heart slowly filled with revenge. No matter what happened, he would make the Four pay for Faith’s death. If he tore apart the young man that caused the chaos around them, even better.

Kismet’s stomach twisted with fear, long barbs stabbing intestines. He was tired, beyond tired if he was to believe his worn-smooth brain. He felt the enormity of the past few days strike him. The effort to stay sane amid the shadows grabbing at his every thought wore down the threadbare blanket of sanity he’d gathered up to warm himself. Sitting amid the carved-up bodies and the dying, Kismet shook with the press of his blood’s need for drugs, his eyes downcast and unseeing.

This man crawling through the blood had made his nightmares whole. Everything that fed on the sides of his head while he slept now had teeth. Beckett had to have doctored the heroin he’d been getting from Nick. It was the only way he’d have gotten it into his body. The drugs were to keep away the creatures lurking just out of the corner of his eye. Now his vision was full of them, and they were looking right back at him.

The rims of Kismet’s eyes smarted with the sting of tears. He’d wanted to hate the magus or tear him apart to make him feel the overwhelming fear that clouded his mind. The finality of slitting someone’s life from their body lodged a glacier in Kismet’s soul, but he couldn’t find the energy to scrape together to care.

Kismet looked up at the waiting Horsemen, a motley range of emotions on their faces. Death stood, a pillar of snow and soot, starkly silent in his patience. Ari shifted back and forth, readying for the thing the magus would spring on them. The blond man’s rawboned face and set mouth kissed the edge of amusement, fed fully on the fight. Min merely seemed weary and resigned, her lithe, petite form struggling to remain standing.

Pestilence. Mal, he would forever be Mal in Kismet’s mind. Mal wore his passions on his face, wet blue eyes gleaming in a silent plea for the young man to stay at his side. The look wasn’t unfamiliar to Kismet, merely odd that something that powerfully caring would be directed at him. It left a stain of regret in his soul, a dapple of tea spilled over soiled linen. He looked away, unable to look at Mal’s raw emotions any longer.

Dropping the blade, Mal reached him, hooking one arm around the young man’s waist. Kismet felt Mal’s hands on him and turned, wanting to pull the fear from Mal’s face. Warmth enveloped Kismet’s body, Mal’s bear hug pulling him free from his muted shock. Kismet pressed his forehead against Mal’s chest.

“So, a canine?” Ari tossed off toward Death, who shrugged. Bound by their leader’s decision, Ari spent the passing seconds wondering what form Beckett would shape the shadows into. Speculating, Ari said, “It would be nice if it were something different. It’s always a canine or bird. For once I wish someone would do something inventive, like a bear or, hell, even an octopus.”