Life in Shadows (4 page)

Overcast
skies didn’t offer any rain to tamp down on visibility. Trees rising along the
wet sidewalk were only now regaining their greenery with the first weeks of
spring. Old Ballard offered mostly brick buildings, none more than three
stories tall, but felt a little closer in than other neighborhoods in Seattle.

“Nightlife
and crowds or dark and quiet?” asked Onyx.

Her
meaning was plain enough. The gallery put them only one block up from Market
Street, where bars and restaurants were still open. In the other direction lay
houses and the ever-encroaching condo developments threatening to consume
anything that didn’t fall under an historic registry. “Witnesses tamp down on
magic power,” Molly considered, “but they don’t prevent old-fashioned muggings.
Think we’re better off with dark and quiet.”

They
picked up the pace. Only a block away from the gallery, both young women
chanted words under their breath, one speaking in Greek and the other in
Hebrew. Their footsteps faded into silence. The zippers and buckles of Molly’s
clothes stopped jingling. The next streetlight up blinked out a few seconds
before they came under its arc.

Onyx
could still see her breath in the chill night air, but she could no longer hear
it.

Molly
let out a couple of quick, high-pitched whistles. It broke the silence, but
Onyx understood the value. A few steps later, Molly gave her best crow call. It
wasn’t bad.

“Calling
in the whole crew, huh?” Onyx whispered.

Her
girlfriend gave her a sidelong look, along with a low, warning feline growl
clearly not meant for her. Then Molly frowned and looked over her shoulder.
“Don’t think I’m gonna bother calling out any dogs,” she murmured. “They mean
well, but they aren’t subtle.”

“Probably
only little rat dogs that fit inside a purse in this neighborhood, anyway.”
Onyx grinned. “Be nice to have something mean on our side, though.”

Molly
considered it for a second, then managed a couple of squeals so soft but
high-pitched that Onyx was impressed she could manage it at all. “The hell is
that?” Onyx asked.

“Trash
pandas. Fuckers you have up here are mean.”

“Oh,
what, Arizona raccoons are sweet and cuddly?”

“I
don’t think I ever saw a raccoon before I left Arizona,” Molly thought out
loud.

The
pair fell silent, walking quickly down the sidewalk of a quiet, narrow
residential street. Trees and parked vehicles lining the street offered some
small degree of cover, but that seemed equally as worrisome as it was
comforting. Anything that might hide them could hide a stalker, too.

They
listened carefully as they walked. They watched the path ahead, watched to
their sides, and looked back over their shoulders many times. Onyx fought down
the urge to hold Molly’s hand. They would both need their hands free in the
event of trouble, and her partner already had to hold onto Elizabeth’s book.

Not
for the first time tonight, Onyx considered that she’d never been in a serious
fight in her life. A few childhood shoving matches in school, sure. One time
things even escalated to slaps, hair-pulling, and a few badly-thrown punches.
The self-defense class she took after that offered only the barest basics.
Mostly the instructor focused on ways to counter or escape an attacker, hurt
him enough to make him think twice, and then run like hell.

Once
she started on the path of witchcraft, Onyx learned protective magic, but only
a few spells that could cause harm. Most of it wasn’t flashy. Her study of
auras led her to the worst spell she knew—one that could easily inflict emotional
turmoil and a crippling headache. While it could do far worse harm if she
really pushed it, Onyx couldn’t conceive of a situation where she’d want to
hurt someone that badly, let alone through such intimate means. If things were
that bad, she could always hurl a little fire. She didn’t need military-grade
flamethrower power to scare off serious trouble.

Past
that, Onyx turned her studies to simple things that helped her and Molly
through everyday life. If she had a specialty, it was in matters of perception,
not fighting. Yet as she and Molly made their way between parked cars and
half-built condominiums, her magically sharpened sight and keen hearing only
seemed to make the trees and buildings loom taller and the shadows draw closer.

Her
brow knit together. Even as a child, shadows and dark spaces never frightened
her. If monsters could hide under the bed, so could she. Onyx turned her gaze
to the rooftops.
This is my element
, she asserted silently, and rejected
any thought of how silly or naïve that might sound.
I like it dark. Nobody
gets to turn that against me. Nobody.

It
was then that she heard the first crow call out, two blocks behind them,
quickly joined by another. The calls didn’t last—one caw, then another, and
then nothing. She heard another caw from across the street. “Someone behind us
and some
thing
above,” said Molly. Her voice carried an uncharacteristic
tremor. “I can’t understand what that means.”

They
picked up the pace. Crows called out again down the street behind them. Molly
glanced over her shoulder and promptly pulled Onyx off the sidewalk, almost
yanking her behind a trailer-sized dumpster outside one of the construction
projects. For Onyx, the wide-eyed alarm on Molly’s face spoke volumes. She’d
never seen her partner so frightened. Come to think of it, she’d almost never
seen Molly show fear.

Onyx
heard her own breath shorten before she felt it, and then she heard another
thing: footsteps. Many footsteps, coming from down the block where she could no
longer hear the warning of crows. She didn’t dare poke her head around the
corner of the dumpster. The cars nearby, however, offered her a better option.
Onyx reached out toward the nearest car with one open hand and whispered, “
Tavo
al Yadi
.”

The
rear view mirror obeyed the gestures of her fingers, turning and tilting to
show her the street behind them. Given the spells she’d already cast to sharpen
her senses, Onyx could make out the shapes in the mirror perfectly well despite
the distance. They didn’t amount to more than silhouettes and shadows outside
the streetlights, but she saw more than enough of them to steal her breath
away. That wasn’t a couple of people stalking them. It looked more like a mob.

Molly
had her wand out as she looked left, right, and up ahead for some avenue of escape.
“There’s nowhere to go,” she hissed.

The
fear in Molly’s voice did more to scare Onyx than the shadows or the noises.
Between the two of them, Molly was the rock. She was the one who always held
that things would be okay and who never backed down from anything. Onyx forced
herself to take a deeper breath. Shadows shouldn’t scare her, and
nothing
should have scared Molly.

Onyx
trusted her senses. She trusted her instincts, too. She couldn’t see who was
fucking with them, but she could see through their bullshit. Their fear was
legitimate. It shouldn’t be
this
bad.

The
large dumpster that concealed them stood outside a half-built condominium. The
building stood three stories tall, taking up almost half the block and
protected only by a chain-link fence. White house wrap with blue product logos
made up most of its façade. It didn’t even have a front door yet. “Let’s hide
in there,” Onyx suggested.

The
redhead practically cringed. “We can’t! We don’t know what’s in there!”

“Molly.
We are not afraid of a fucking Ballard condominium.”

Another
crow called out, this time joined in its warning by the yowl of a cat somewhere
Onyx couldn’t pinpoint. Molly’s attention snapped to the taller set of condos
on the other side of the street. “There,” she gulped. “Something’s there.”

Onyx
saw nothing. “Okay. So we go the other way.” Her partner shook her head,
breathing rapidly and somehow unable to speak. Onyx squeezed her arm. “You’re a
bad ass, Molly. You’re the biggest bad ass I know. Anything that finds us is
gonna wish it hadn’t. Open that thing up and let’s go.”

The
pleading look in Molly’s eyes pained Onyx, but the redhead seemed to gather her
nerves again under her lover’s firm stare. She pulled a loose key from one
pocket of her leather jacket, closed her eyes and murmured out the words of the
spell almost like a prayer, and then threw the key toward the gate on the
fence. It hit with a light, high-pitched ringing that seemed all the louder for
the silence that the pair tried so hard to create. The disruption paid off as
the chains holding the gate closed visibly sagged and the padlock fastening the
links together fell to the ground.

She
looked back to Onyx, still afraid but seemingly ready to move. “They’ll see
us,” she warned.

The
other witch looked around for a solution. Parked vehicles lined both sides of
the street, stretching around the corner up ahead. Her supernatural vision
revealed the subtle red flash of one car’s active alarm. The construction lot
offered the other half of the equation. Onyx reached out with the same spell
that tilted the rear view mirror on the car nearby to pick up and hurl a loose
hunk of concrete at the BMW parked down along the next block. As soon as the
concrete went flying, she looked to Molly and hissed, “Go!”

Flashing
lights, high-pitched tones, and a honking horn erupted in an automated tantrum
as the pair darted from cover. Fighting down her fear, Molly paused as soon as
she was through the gate to let Onyx through, then closed it shut again. She
didn’t bother with the chain, let alone the lock, but closing it at least
eliminated the most obvious sign of their passing. The pair heard the rush of
footsteps in the dark street. They plunged into the condominium through its
doorless entrance and immediately crouched in the shadows.

“This
isn’t gonna work,” whispered Molly. Even in the darkness of the partially-built
hallway, Onyx could see the fear on the redhead’s face. “They’re coming for
us.”

“Molly,
don’t let your fear win,” hissed Onyx. “You’re bigger and badder than—Molly!”

She
rose, shaking her head and stepping backward. “There’s too many of them!”

As
she spoke, the pair saw movement outside the fence. The mob slowed to a walk as
it came into view with little noise other than footsteps and many
unintelligible whispers. The crowd seemed entirely male, though Onyx couldn’t
make out anything more than shadows and silhouettes.

Molly
took off down the hall, quickly coming to the building’s main stairwell and
vaulting up its concrete steps. Onyx chased after her. Though the redhead’s fear
gave her speed, Onyx could rely on the spell she’d cast over her vision to help
her through the dark and incomplete building.

She
made the connection as she followed Molly up to the third floor: if she could
see fine in here, why couldn’t she make out the crowd’s features? Even with the
clouds, the trees, and all the other little factors in play outside, the street
still offered more light than the incomplete building.

At
the top of the stairs, Molly paused to look for somewhere to go. Once again,
she found little more than hallways still lacking in drywall or mounted doors.
“Molly, wait!” Onyx hissed again. It didn’t stop the redhead. She rushed out of
the staircase and down the nearest path to the back of the building until Onyx
added, “Don’t leave me!”

That
stopped her. Molly turned back, suddenly confronted by a concern that even her
terror couldn’t override. It was one thing to flee with Onyx right at her
heels. Abandoning her lover was unthinkable. “Onyx, c’mon!” she whispered when
she saw the other young woman going toward the empty window frame facing the
street outside.

Onyx
hustled to the portal, noting the absence of the sort of racket her boots would
normally make on this floor. Their flight up the stairs had been similarly
silent. It proved that their spells worked properly. Even their voices wouldn’t
carry. Whoever and whatever followed them couldn’t be tracking them by sound.

She
dropped low as she came to the windowsill, peering over the edge while showing
as little of herself to any observer outside as possible. The space immediately
outside the building remained clear. She saw muddy ground, crates and boxes of
construction gear, and a chain link fence with its gate still latched. No one
came past the fence. The mob of men lurked under nearby trees and in the
shadows of parked vehicles. They all clung to the darkest places available.

A
hand tugged at her shoulder. Molly tried to pull her away from the window,
gripping both her wand and as much of the fabric of Onyx’s coat as she could.
“C’mon,” she repeated.

Onyx
held firm to look over the mob carefully. She’d tracked Molly through the
pitch-black staircase thanks to the spell over her vision. Her spells of
perception worked fine. So why couldn’t she make out anyone’s features in the
crowd below?

One
spark of doubt brought on others. Hadn’t the mob been running before? And now
they walked and lurked quietly? Onyx found that even stranger than their
obscure features. Whoever was following them had to have recruited the mob from
the nightlife nearby. That much seemed plausible. Magic could make speech
compelling, or it could whip emotions up into a frenzy, or maybe both. But to
instill this sort of control over a whole crowd? This sort of discipline?