Shadow Fall (9 page)

“Go on and what?”

“It’s your dig, so you should be the one to bring it back into the world,” Comstock said, nodding with emphasis. “Go ahead, pick up the scepter and bring it to light.”

Trembling with excitement, Kira wrapped her gloved hands around the wooden rod. She ran her hands along the length, separating the staff from the hard ground. When she was certain it was free, she straightened, holding the staff at arm’s length in front of her.

Warmth sank into her fingers, and she realized that her gloves had vanished. The warmth became a hum that vibrated along the entire length of the power scepter, causing her hands to tingle. Tiny hairs along her arms stood on end as power thrummed through the staff, causing it to glow.

The workers, the excavation site, Comstock—everything fell away. Everything except the ruins of the temple. Stone by stone it rebuilt itself, rising out of the desert to dominate the skyline, reclaiming its former glory. The Temple of Set, with two granite statues of the Typhonic beast-god flanking the entrance, towering replicas of the power scepter gripped in massive hands.

For a moment she wasn’t sure where she was. The temple looked the same as it had when she’d slipped through a portal into the alternate-Cairo, when she’d traveled completely behind Logic’s Veil and met Solis, Lady of Between. But this wasn’t Between. This was her dream. Set could have no power here.

As soon as she thought the god’s name, the ground rumbled. The sands shifted in front of her as a massive stele pushed up into the air.

She recognized its image, having seen it on a tablet at the Manchester Museum. Set, wearing the dual crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, a
was
scepter in his left hand, an ankh in his right. To his right stood an altar adorned with lotus blossoms. At the top of the stele hieroglyphs proclaimed: S
ET OF
N
EBTI,
L
ORD OF PROVISIONS, GREAT OF STRENGTH, POWERFUL OF ARM
.

Set had never lost his good press in his hometown. The proclamations continued on the limestone and granite of the temple walls, colorfully etched and painted glyphs extolling the majesty and grandeur of the lord of the desert for all to read. S
ET, THE
M
AJESTIC
O
NE, SLAYER OF
A
PEP, PROTECTOR OF
R
A, RULER OF
N
UBT, LORD OF THE DESERT
.

The heavy rumbling of stone moving against stone assaulted her ears. One of the Set statues moved, the trunk-like snout looming as he looked down at her. Except that it didn’t seem like a statue, but something caught between stone and flesh. A voice sounded in her head, more an impression of words than sound.
Welcome, daughter.

No, no, no. “I am not your daughter!”

Laughter like stone grinding against stone hit her like a percussive blast, almost pushing her to her knees.
You are a child of chaos, born of thunder and lightning. You cling to Ma’at and turn your back on Isfret for nothing. You belong with us.

“Never!” She gripped the scepter like a fighting staff, prepared to defend herself. “I am the Hand of Ma’at. I am a Shadowchaser. I walk in the Light. Always.”

The god’s eyes flashed golden.
Think you to destroy me with my own power?

The power scepter ripped free of her grasp, flew to the statue. The desert floor rose up about her, hot sand trapping her from the waist down. She struggled to move, frantic as the god slowly turned the staff so that the spiked prongs pointed at her.

Kira screamed as the tines embedded in her shoulder—the exact spot where the Fallen’s dagger had pierced her months before. Pain erupted as Shadow magic poured into her like an electric current, burning her synapses, scorching her defenses. Her vision blurred, fading into a shimmering curtain of shifting green power as the blue sheen of Light met the swirling yellow of Chaos.

Don’t fight,
a soothing voice whispered in her head.
Accept your gift, what you are. The pain will subside once you do.

She’d give anything to make the pain end. Would it be so bad? She already had some Shadow in her. The Lady of Between knew it, and the Lady of Light already suspected. So what was the point of fighting what everyone already believed of her anyway? It took too much energy to fight, and for what? It was power, nothing but power, power that she already had running through her veins, through her genes. If she claimed it, claimed her right, she’d be even better at her job. No, she’d be better
than
her job. She wouldn’t have to work within Gilead’s rules and restrictions, wouldn’t have to worry about dealing with Sanchez’s condescension or Balm’s reticence. She could handle any Shadow or Fallen problems that crossed her path her own way. She didn’t need them. She didn’t need anyone.

She wrapped her hand around the staff.
Don’t resist. Accept it, and soon it will be all over.

Don’t resist? Ha. Resistance was in her very nature.

Wake up, Kira,
she admonished herself, fighting to claw herself free of the sand.
This is only a dream. This is not you. Wake up and walk into the Light!

K
ira’s eyes snapped open, her muscles locked against the need to bolt. Darkness arched above her, pierced by bars of ambient orange light coming through the shutters covering the window. She was in her bedroom. Not the desert, not Egypt.

She scrubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, needing to reassure herself that she could move, that she wasn’t still trapped in the valley where dreams were all too real. Feeling Khefar’s warm bulk beside her, hearing the deep soothing evenness of his breathing pulled her further from the nightmare and back into reality. Only when she was absolutely certain that she couldn’t slide back into the dreamscape did she allow herself to relax completely.

The dream. With the exception of discussing Balm’s box and her fears about it with Bernie, it was the same damn dream she’d had the last three nights. She’d also dreamt it twice before since they’d returned from London after their journey to restore the Vessel of Nun to its rightful place on Elephantine Island at Egypt’s ancient boundary. The vision grew more vivid each time she experienced it. She felt the heat, the grit of the sand, the sun beating down on them. She had heard the click of tools and the excited, rolling cadence of the workers’ voices as they moved and sifted rubble. She had even smelled the sweat as she, the interns, and the diggers excavated squared-off sections of the site.

She’d felt the weight of the
was
scepter, felt the power in it, the terror of the temple appearing. Felt the agony of the power staff digging into her shoulder, pumping Shadow and Chaos into her system.

Every sensation was as real as if she’d been awake, much like her waking dreams. Except that she controlled her waking dreams, or Balm did when Kira dreamspoke with the head of the Gilead Commission. This vision, dreamwalk, psychic interlude—whatever it was—she had no control over. What’s more, she knew it was a dream but as much as she fought it, she couldn’t escape it, couldn’t change the outcome. Couldn’t fight pulling the preserved
was
scepter free of the dirt, wrapping her bare hands around the gilded shaft, exulting in the power that had coursed through her. Not once had she thought of her Lightblade, of using the Light magic to protect and defend herself against all that Shadow magic.

Khefar’s warm body and deep breathing beside her was a reassurance that she truly was awake and in her bedroom. In the handful of weeks since they’d come back from London, despite her occasional qualms, he’d fit neatly into her life and her home as if he’d always been there. Khefar was immune to her extrasense. She couldn’t read him, could touch him without siphoning off his life force. The skin hunger, the need to feel another person’s touch, still gripped her, but he was only too willing to sate it by sleeping skin to skin.

It should have been comforting, but now it wasn’t. Could she still allow herself to fall deeply asleep beside him? Not with such dangerous dreams stalking her sleep.

Khefar was right. Kira had changed, was changing. Now she understood what was happening. The dream confirmed what she’d wanted to deny: her powers were changing. More Shadow magic entwined with her own Light ability, and she didn’t know what the outcome would be.

She didn’t want to take any chances that her blended magic could be harmful to Khefar. Her regular touch ability had sent her sister to the hospital, put her in a coma. A wielding of her powers had caused her to injure one of her dearest friends. She didn’t want to think what would happen if Shadow grew stronger inside her.

Slowly she extricated herself from beneath Khefar’s arm and slid out of bed. She froze as his breathing changed, waiting tensely for it to deepen back to full sleep. Reassured by the return of his regular breathing pattern, she grabbed the tank top and yoga pants off her nightstand, awkwardly dressing as she headed out the bedroom door and down the stairs. She needed to shake off the dream, needed to think. Needed to rinse the dry-sand residue of the nightmare from her mouth.

In the kitchen, she grabbed the water pitcher from the fridge, and a glass. Kira filled it to the rim and then gulped down most of it. The cool liquid soothed her parched throat, rinsed the sand particles away. Another indicator of the realness of the dreamscape. Somehow Set was influencing her sleep, taking over. But why? What in the world could Set want with her?

She gripped the edge of the countertop to keep herself anchored as she remembered what the god had said to her. Words bounced around her skull, inducing a headache. Set wanted her to join them. Them who?
Welcome, daughter.

Kira rubbed at her shoulder. She could believe a lot of things but she wouldn’t believe she was related to Set. For one thing, the god was purported to be impotent, at least as far as the ancient myths were concerned. Then again, Set did have several wives and a few children associated with him in some stories. During thousands of years of Egyptian history, religion and myths had undergone many changes, not all of which were known, let alone understood.

Did he mean for her to become Shadow? Like hell that was going to happen. She could deal with not being human, but she refused to accept she was destined by kind or kin to become a Shadowling.

“I am not a child of Shadow,” she whispered fiercely. “I will never be claimed by Chaos.”

She drained the rest of the water. Despite all her protestations of being a loner, she knew she had a decent network of people who cared about her. Yet she didn’t think she could talk to any of them about the dreams. Kira could talk to Wynne about Chasing, but not really about the big stuff, the close-to-the-quick things.

She wished Bernie were still around, her mentor who—unbeknownst to her—had known about and quietly aided her Shadowchasing duties. Though she hadn’t thought she could confide in him about being a Chaser when he was alive, she could talk to him about a plethora of other things, from her touch ability to artifacts.

Now that he was dead—he lived on, so to speak, through special mementos he’d given her—Kira would have talked to Comstock about this dream. But Bernie had been
in the dream
, excavating Naqada with her. Bernie had all but said her family tree wasn’t an issue. And Bernie had been the one to encourage her to pull the
was
scepter free of the sand.

Why would he do that? Surely Bernie—the real, now-dead Bernie—would be alarmed to know that there was Shadowling in her heritage. He’d been killed by a Shadowling, a seeker demon. He’d secretly worked for the Gilead Commission, which was all about fighting Shadow. Why would he encourage her to embrace it?

Her gaze fell on the driftwood chest sitting atop the dining table. Answers lay inside, or rather proof lay within. Truth about her origins. Balm had already shared some—that Kira’s mother hailed from a tribe of lightning spirits that had their roots near the Fon of West Africa. Balm didn’t know who Kira’s father was, but everything seemed to point to him being a hybrid—or, more specifically, a Shadowling, if not one of the Fallen.

Kira pressed her knuckles to her forehead. The idea that her father was one of the heavy hitters of Shadow, one of the beings who’d fought in the First Battle against Order and Light at the beginning of time, made her ache all over. It was difficult to comprehend. Yet she had Comstock telling her it was all right, Balm’s silent timing in sending the box, and Set reaching out to her from her own dreams. She didn’t want her suspected parentage to be true, but what other truth could there be?

She’d always been painfully aware of how different she was. How nonhuman her abilities were. Yes, there were human-born telepaths who were also psychometrists, able to read impressions of a person by touching their personal objects. Kira knew her ability was different, though—a souped-up-on-steroids version. She could read an object and a person with a single touch, essentially downloading their thoughts, emotions, and memories in the ultimate invasion of privacy. That download drained the person she touched, often with fatal consequences if she read too long or too deeply.

With that sort of devastating talent, keeping apart from others was easy, even if it hurt. Becoming a Shadowchaser was one more way to distance herself from the mundane world, the human world. Even her cover profession as an antiquities specialist had her interacting with objects and cultures from the distant past instead of the here and now. She had to face it, she wasn’t part of the living, breathing human world even when she tried to be, as if she’d known on some level that she wasn’t supposed to be, genetically couldn’t be.

She put the empty glass in the sink, the need to clear her head pressing down on her. Going downstairs to talk to Comstock by way of his pocket watch was out; she didn’t think she could handle it if he encouraged her to take a walk on the Shadow side. Balm was incommunicado, and Kira could certainly guess what the Lady of Light would say about Shadow. Wynne and Zoo had needed the night off that Kira’s attendance at the fund-raiser provided, and she didn’t want to burden her friends with what as yet wasn’t a big deal. Wynne would certainly worry, and Wynne already worried enough.