Shadow Blade (26 page)

Her quick movements surprised him. She scrambled out of the monument, skittering like a crab. A blast hit him square on his collarbone, pain radiating outward as the hit of raw greenish power burned through leather to skin on the right side of his chest.
“Now, Nansee!”

A string of etheric webbing flew over his left shoulder, hitting Kira just as she launched herself at him. She screamed, body flaring pollen-yellow and bowing off the ground as she tried to fight the bonds coiling around her body, immobilizing her. A sizzling sound slid through the air, punctuated with an acrid scent.

“Gods, they’re burning her!”

Khefar fell to his knees, dagger flashing as he sliced through the bonds. She screamed and thrashed, fighting him, kicking and screaming and biting, power twisting and flaring as the webbing fell from her singed flesh. His dagger screamed as well, wanting to taste the blood, her blood.
Give me death, give me death!

As if she heard it, Kira wrapped her fingers around the blade. “Yes,” she hissed, pulling against his strength to guide the tip of the dagger towards her heart. “Kill it. Kill the Shadow.”

“No!” Adrenaline surged through Khefar as he fought her, prying her fingers one by one from the blade, leaving both their hands bloody. Even as Kira scrambled up, trying to reach the blade, he lifted it high,
then
jammed it into the consecrated ground with all his strength. “Be silent!”

The dagger obeyed, its magic muzzled. Kira lunged for it again. Khefar threw his arms around her waist, dragged her back and down.
“Kira, stop!”

She froze. “Kira,” she stuttered. “My name is Kira.
My name.
Kira my name.”
Blinking through the dirt, sweat, and blood caking her face, she focused on him, fingers skimming his jaw. “You don’t die. I can touch you and you don’t die.”

That sounded more like Kira’s voice, Kira’s thoughts. “No, I’m not going to die. Not today. You aren’t either.”

“Burns.
Pain burns cold. It kills. But you touch and it sleeps.”

She buried her face against his neck. “Don’t let go,” she whispered against his heart. “Please don’t let go.”

“I won’t,” he vowed, pulling her close. “I’ll take care of you.”

“Okay.” Her head slumped backward. The power chasing along her skin dimmed, then winked out.

“Kira!”
He touched fingers to her throat, heart banging with relief when he found her pulse, thready and erratic.

He looked up at Anansi. “Something’s wrong with her.
Seriously wrong.”

“She’s been poisoned,” the demigod said quietly. “The Veil no longer shields her extrasense and Shadow is gaining a foothold, body and spirit.”

“Will she be all right? Can you fix this?”

“The bruises, cracked ribs, and the dislocated hip are easy enough to repair. The combination of the drugs and the assault may have caused permanent damage to her mind.”

Khefar’s hand shook as he pulled his dagger from the ground, sheathed it. Clutching Kira close, he managed to climb to his feet. Wynne had helped her husband up. Both still had weapons at the ready, but Zoo leaned a little too heavily against his wife.

The warrior asked Wynne, “How is he?”

“I’m all right.” Zoo replied himself, grimacing and clasping his right shoulder. “Hurts like a bitch, but I’ll live.
Would have been worse if the Kevlar hadn’t slowed it down a little.”

“I know what you mean,” Wynne added. “My suit’s ruined. Since when could she shoot light blasts like that?”

“Since never,” her husband answered.

Wynne started back along the path toward the gate. “We can have a Q and A later. Now we’ve got to get the hell out of here and get these two back home before we get company.”

“We’ve got to get Zoo to a hospital,” Khefar insisted. “He needs that arm looked at and stitched up. Is there one nearby?”

Zoo shook his head. “It’s just a scratch. Wynne can fix me up, and I’ve got spells to take care of the rest. I’ll survive. Besides, taking me to a hospital means too many questions none of us need to answer.”

Khefar tucked Kira’s head against his chest,
then
carefully got into the van. “Can either of you get into Kira’s place?” he said when Nansee moved to shut the door. “I know she’s got stuff there we can use.”

“We have to go to our place,” Wynne said, her voice unsteady. “I don’t know how many protections she’s got on hers and we don’t have time to unlock each one. We already have a room that’s safe for her. Emergency supplies too.”

“Something like this has happened before?”

Wynne shook her head, her expression raw. “Nothing like
this
has ever happened before. She’s been through some serious crap, but she’s
never not
recognized us. She’s never attacked us.”

“All right.”
He could tell Wynne was close to losing her control. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter 22

I
s that it?”

“Sure is.” Nico held up the small vial of clear liquid.

Kira stared at it, fidgeting with excitement. Finally, after months of planning, they were in the most romantic hotel in Venice for a long weekend, though Balm and Gilead thought they were in Brussels. Disobeying the Balm of Gilead gave her an illicit thrill but paled in comparison to the thrill she experienced when looking into Nico’s eyes.

Soon, very soon, they’d finally be together the way they both wanted. She had no idea what the liquid was or where Nico had gotten it, and she didn’t care. All she cared about was that it would take away her curse and she and Nico could stop being Chaser and handler and instead become lovers.

“How long will we have?”

“Three days, I’m told.” The laughter always present in his smoky topaz eyes sobered. “I will ask you for the last time: Are you sure you want to do this?”

Instead of answering, she snatched the vial from him, pulled the stopper,
then
tossed back the liquid. Tears blurred her vision as the concoction burned its way down her throat. It seemed to spread through every cell of her body, changing her. She’d had liquor before, but it hadn’t scorched her insides like this.

Nico rubbed her back as she coughed and gagged her way through the burn. “How will we know it worked?” she asked when she could speak again.

He took the vial from her, placed it on the nightstand. “Let’s find out.”

He leaned over her as she eased back onto the pillows. Energy crackled between them, but not the blue of her power. Expectation and yearning caused her heart to slam inside her chest.

She was afraid and nervous and excited, but ready, oh so ready. From the moment she’d seen Nicolo Darvalos, she’d wanted him. Every female Chaser in training had wanted him and no one, not even Kira, had speculated that she would become his charge. She’d secretly gloated when he’d been assigned as her handler, bitterly disappointing the other trainees and forever cementing their dislike of her. Not that she cared. Nico belonged to her and always would as long as they both lived. Discovering the attraction wasn’t simple teacher-student infatuation, but was in fact reciprocated, was the best moment of Kira’s life.

Until now.

His fingers brushed her cheek. She stuttered out a sigh, curling into his touch.
So warm.
“What do you want to do, my love?”

She cupped his face in her hands, marveling at the feel of his skin against hers, the way his thick dark hair tickled the edges of her hands.
“Everything.”

He touched her, touched her as she had never been touched. She learned the differences between holding, petting, stroking, between caressing and fondling. She discovered the glory of lips and teeth and tongue and all the wonderful things the male form could do with the female. In the early morning hours, secure in her ability to please and be pleased, she learned how to make a man shiver and shake as he called out her name.

They stayed in their hotel room for two days, exploring each other fully, until Nico suggested dinner at one of the cafés near the Grand Canal. Kira didn’t want to go out, but the idea of leaving behind her Lightblade and wandering the Piazza San Marco like the hundreds of other tourists and lovers had a certain appeal.

Gorgeous by day, the square was absolutely stunning by night, golden light bathing the historic buildings with an etheric beauty. Arm in arm, they crossed the Piazza, heading for the arcade. “Where are you taking me? I would have been happy to order in again.”

“My dear, we cannot come to Venice and not walk the Piazza,” Nico said, his grin infectious. “There’s a late night restaurant near Teatro La Fenice with a most impressive collection of wines.”

“We’re not going to stay out too late, are we?” Kira asked. “If it’s our last night together, I don’t want to waste too much time on food.”

Nico laughed. “If this is to be our last night together, my sweet, I need to keep up my strength. But not to worry, they have takeaway service.”

All at once, hundreds of Venice’s ubiquitous pigeons took to the air, swirling around them, separating them. Even without her extrasense, Kira could sense something was different, wrong. The pigeons should have been at roost, not filling the Piazza, flying away, not attacking. She instinctively reached for her Lightblade only to remember that she’d left it in the hotel room.
“Nico!”

A muffled shout lost in the fluttering of thousands of wings.
So many, so unnatural, something from a Hitchcock movie.
Holding one arm up to keep the pigeons from clawing at her face, Kira reached out for her handler.

“Nico!”

He lay sprawled at the base of Saint Teodoro’s granite column. His chest had been sliced open, blood staining the bricks beneath him.

“No!” Frantic, she searched the Piazza for help, but the square was strangely deserted. “Don’t die, Nico, please don’t die!”

She fumbled through his pockets for a phone, repeatedly keyed Gilead’s emergency code. Screaming into the phone, calling for help, trying to hold Nico’s chest closed, hold his life in. Blood carried power, reactivating her extrasense, flooding her senses with his thoughts and emotions.
The desire to possess, to take her away from Balm, away from Gilead.
The abrupt transformation to need, then to love.
Defying Balm, defying nature, even if it meant death, to give Kira what she needed, what every human should
have .
 . .

“
Nico .
 . . ”

“Ki-Kira.”
Air gurgled in his throat as he looked at her, the smile half-formed on his lips as he died.

Laughter.
She raised her
head,
saw two men standing a few feet away, hands in their pockets.
One reptilian, one heart-stoppingly beautiful, familiar.
They laughed again, revealing pointed teeth.
Shadowlings.
The handsome one blew a kiss at her before both turned and strolled away.

No. Not this time. You won’t escape this time. I’ve got my power back and I’m going to make you pay for what you did to Nico.

Power flooded her body. She drew her blade. It wasn’t her Lightblade, but an older dagger, Egyptian. It didn’t matter. It wanted to kill and at that moment, so did she.

She leaped at the Shadowlings, consumed with the urge to destroy. More Shadowlings flooded the square like a flock of birds coming home to roost. She screamed, blade flashing as she swung again and again. Yellow rain fell as she split Shadowlings apart. Yet no matter how many times she killed them, they kept coming back.

Venice disappeared. She stumbled through a nightmarish landscape pierced by bolts of two-colored lightning—yellow and blue. Fire careened around her, burning through her veins. It felt as if thousands of little teeth gnawed at her, ripping her apart from the inside out, blinding her with pain. Shadowlings and wraiths swirled around her like ghosts in a fog, taunting her, thwarting her attempts to break through.

She screamed again, fighting her way through with fists and feet and teeth, desperate to get away, get to safety. Balm called to her through the storm but she couldn’t make it through. She felt as if she struggled through quicksand as tombstones toppled around her, being pulled further and further down into the abyss of Chaos and Shadow.

There was no use in fighting it. She was trapped. Every effort to claw her way free was met with failure. She might as well give up.

Kira!

The wind wailed her name. At least, she thought it was the wind. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was someone she knew, someone trying to help?

Desperate, she flung her hand up, reaching for something, anything to pull herself to freedom. Something caught her hand. She looked up.

Khefar looked down at her, his face set in familiar implacable lines, his eyes burning.
“Fight!
If you want to escape this Chaos and live, you have got to fight!”

Reaching deep, she found the last reserves of her will and fought to pull free, Khefar’s demands ringing in her ears. Her body and her will stretched past their limits, tearing, screaming; the Chaos holding her, reluctant to let go.

One last kick and she launched free, panicked and flying, fearful and falling. But Khefar was there, and he caught her.

It took a long time to swim up through the darkness, longer still to stop hearing the screams. Every time her grip slipped, every time she thought she’d plunge back into the depths, she’d be pulled back.

She opened her eyes, expecting to find Wynne beside her, Zoo ready to dose her with one of his herbal cocktails. Instead she found the Nubian, and he held her hand.

Wordlessly she stared down at his fingers, his bare brown fingers, threaded through her own. No leather, no plastic,
no
layers of armor. Just warm skin against warm skin, and a feeling she could only compare to inhaling wintergreen, cool and crisp.

“It seemed to comfort you,” he said into the quiet. “I didn’t mind.”