Shadow Hunt (7 page)

Standing in that deepest pitch of Shadow was Gunnar Martin, watching his daughter being shamed by the lowly shadow of a human.

Cam’s high faltered at this added variable. He thought he’d had the answer. Now he suddenly knew that he should have been watching Mathilde herself. Though she faced forward, everything about her stance suggested that she knew her father was behind her. The flare of her nostrils said she’d had enough of looking like a fool.

Mathilde stalked into the courtyard.

Cam didn’t have to
see
to guess what Mathilde was about. His anger surged, black as tar.

With a subtle tilt of Mathilde’s head, Shadow magic swirled around Ellie’s shadow, penetrating her dark self like a many-tentacled parasite. Whatever power Mathilde Martin wielded, it had something to do with overcoming the human soul; a power far beyond the powers of the mages gathered here today. No wonder Martin was a preeminent House among magekind.

The prismatic colors of Ellie’s shadow dimmed.

Ellie put a hand on his arm, as if to keep him calm.

Not working. He was burning inside.

Mathilde showed off her power, holding the shadow in a frozen writhe, its beautiful body straining against invisible bonds.

“You have not been observant,” Mathilde said to her novices. “Your skills are nothing to the shadow because the shadow is a brute. An animal. If you fight strength to strength, you will fail. You will die.”

“Let her go,” Cam said.

“It has no mind of its own,” Mathilde continued, “because the mind is over there.” She set her black gaze on Ellie. “It’s the
mind
that tells the shadow what to do. Actually, any greater mind will do. Observe how it works.”

Mathilde whispered to the shadow. Cam couldn’t hear what was said, but got the idea when Ellie’s shadow arched sensuously, putting one hand to her breast, the other to the cleft in her legs.

That’s it.
Cam broke inside.

He glanced down to the space in front of Slight.

“The shadow is a
puppet
—” Mathilde began, happily instructing.

Cam saw the Shadows around Slight begin to move, but Cam got there first.

That extra moment was everything.

The black dagger was in Cam’s grip, and a second later, its blade was at Mathilde’s neck. Segue had taught him to move very fast too.

One nick and Gunnar Martin would be out an heir. If Mathilde didn’t free Ellie’s shadow, Cam absolutely intended to kill.

At the side of the courtyard, Ellie was standing, caught in surprise. Her face was ashen, her eyes glistening.

“You will release Ms. Russo’s shadow now.” Cam was astonished that he could sound so cool when the world had gone so red. This wasn’t what he’d planned, or who he’d intended to strike. But he could not stand by and watch anyone, however dangerous, mess with Ellie. It was wrong on so many levels—wrong for his sweetheart, wrong for him, wrong for Segue, wrong for humankind—that he had to act.

But what the hell was he supposed to do now?

Gunnar stepped from the darkness of the building. He looked angry too. Good.

“I’ve not harmed her,” Mathilde argued, panting in his grasp.

Ellie’s shadow remained writhing in sexual thrall. And yes, having another’s will forced upon her was causing harm.

“Release her now,” Cam said, “or I will scratch your throat with this knife.” How ironic that that’s all it would take; Mathilde would be undone by her own House’s magic.

Mathilde, to her credit, didn’t waver. “I will not. The shadow will kill me in an instant, like the rabid animal she is.”

“No, I won’t,” Ellie said.

Cam glanced at Gunnar again. Level black eyes, tight jaw.

There was no way that man was going to let them leave Martin House, to pass beyond the wards after threatening the life of his daughter. Six other mages would witness that Cam had held a death blade to Martin’s heir.

What to do?

He could release Mathilde and let the Martins dole out their payback for their embarrassment. Cam didn’t think that even Adam’s friend on the mage Council could help them, considering the threat they now posed to this House.

Maybe he could use Mathilde as a hostage to barter a way back across the wards and leave Slight for another day.

Or Cam could kill Mathilde, and with it her power to hold the shadow, then let the shadow finish anyone who got in their way. Death and madness for everyone.

Cam looked at Gunnar. That man would not be coerced.

Cam wouldn’t be either; he would not allow Ellie to be openly assaulted.

Stalemate. And it seemed everyone present knew it. “My life for hers!” came a man’s shout.

Cam’s breath spoiled in his lungs. Of course. It would play out this way.

He could guess who’d spoken. It was someone who needed a dramatic show of loyalty to go from a stray to be claimed by a House.

Mathilde was ready for it, an opportunistic woman used to getting her own way. “You wanted Slight all along, didn’t you?”

Cam glanced at Slight, who had his arms out, hands open, a posture of submission.

“Cam?” Ellie asked. She understood their peril too.

But Slight’s offer was a trick. Had to be. Slight couldn’t become a member of Martin House if he was dead. What was the point of that? These mages weren’t inclined toward selflessness. There had to be more to it.

“You wanted the stray,” Gunnar said. “Well, there he is.”

The shadow collapsed out of Mathilde’s hold and Ellie pulled her across the courtyard and into full union, visible to Cam—to everyone—in the flush of anger that suddenly colored her features, the dip of Ellie’s chin and narrowing of her eyes. The shadow’s fight was now Ellie’s fight.

“There,” Ellie snapped. “My shadow won’t hurt anyone. We just want Slight.”

Cam caught some kind of communication in the eye contact between Gunnar and Slight. A little . . .
regard
on the part of Martin House. This might just be Slight’s moment after all, his dream coming true after all his hard work.

Cam’s mind worked fast to puzzle out the possible outcomes, but . . .

Slight’s narrow expression went avaricious. The Shadows misting the spot where he stood began to churn, as if kicked up by sudden movement . . . and then he was gone.

Had he disappeared to attack? Invisibility had been Slight’s advantage from the first.

No . . . Cam peered more closely into the Shadows, the Twilight trees beyond the Seminary, and the grassy amble of lawns. There: Slight was running off, obviously trying to lead him away from Mathilde.
Come and get me.

Still didn’t feel right, didn’t balance in Cam’s head, but somehow he knew that talion for Marcie’s death was now or never.

 

 

Ellie finally drew a decent breath when Cam stepped away from Mathilde. The mage bitch backed immediately toward her father. Yeah, run to Daddy.

Ellie was always aware of her shadow’s nakedness, of her shadow’s hedonistic abandon where passions of all kinds were concerned. But Mathilde had made her a spectacle . . . in front of all these people....

The other mages who’d gathered for this dirty little lesson now resembled a pack of wolfhounds panting to leap forward, but they didn’t. She and Cam still had the upper hand: the knife and her shadow.

“Ellie.” Cam quickly cocked his head back and to the right. She figured that was the direction he’d seen Slight go.

Right. If they were going to catch him, they had to go after him now. As it was, only her shadow had a chance of tracking and catching up to him.

She and Cam met, wary, at the west corner of the courtyard, and backed into a run from the Seminary. They left behind the neat pathways. Slight had made a trail of flattened grass footprints across the lawn—none too subtle—to lead them away from Mathilde and her father. To protect Martin House.

“I don’t like this,” Cam said to her.

“Neither do I,” Ellie answered.

But they were losing time. They took off across the grass, though Slight wasn’t visible anywhere. She pumped for speed and distance, Cam beside her. They couldn’t lose this chance. The chilly air in her lungs felt like crystal shards, but she didn’t slow down.

Ellie focused her thoughts on Marcie. She thought of Marcie’s warm welcome, warm kitchen, warm smile. Thought of the night Marcie died, when Ellie had finally made it to the kitchen, not understanding why tears were streaming down her face and why a scream was lodged in her throat until she spotted Marcie’s lifeless body held in her shadow’s arms.

Emotion turned in Ellie’s breast, grief surging, anger refocusing. She thought of Slight, the perpetrator of the crime, and released herself. The shadow sprang out of her body, a keening noise rising from its throat, and it sprinted forward, a hunter after prey.

Her shadow disregarded the easy footprints and took off toward the trees, a streak of black, a ghost on the lawns, a disembodied soul looking for vengeance.

Ellie and Cam ran after, and he looked over to shout, “Not you!”

Yes, she knew. A hundred times, she knew. She would not kill Slight. She would only catch him. That was the deal, and unless there was some other unforeseeable interference, she would stick to it.

They broke into the trees that ran along the boundary of the lawns. The ground was littered with papery brown leaves. Husks of others hung limply from bony branches above. The trunks were wide-set, with the rise of land otherwise clear.

She couldn’t see which direction her shadow had gone, but she could feel the inner tug from where they were joined, the draw of some trail Slight had left, imperceptible to her and Cam. Three steps later a sharp spear of satisfaction drove through her breast, and she knew her shadow had caught their quarry.

“Got him!”

But beside her, Cam skidded in the late leaves and fell to the ground. She tried to help him up, to continue forward, but he grabbed her protectively and looked all around himself, his body a shield from an unseen enemy.

“Do you hear that?” he demanded.

Ellie only heard the slight sigh of air in empty branches. Cam, however, appeared haunted, his pallor marred by red stress lines. “The fae, Ellie, they’re here. Everywhere.”

“No one’s here, Cam.” What was happening to him?

He dug a hand into his hair as if to grip his skull. “I can hear them now.”

“Hear what, honey?” Her heart was racing ahead of them. They needed to get to her shadow; she wanted to kill Slight too badly to hold back for long. It was a gritty, grinding lust in her belly. She was
dangerous.
Cam, of all people, should know.

“Coming,” Cam said. “They say ‘coming’ over and over.”

She tried to put a soft hand on his cheek to force him to look at her while she gasped for breath. “Who’s coming?”

When he finally looked down, she saw that the whites of his eyes had gone black with Shadow too. Cam had been overtaken.

They had to get out of this place. He had too much magic within him.

Cam seemed to try to answer her question with one of his own. “Do you see them?”

There are no fae here!
she wanted to scream. This was Earth, not Twilight. He needed someone at Segue to help him.

But he shook his head, comprehension easing his frantic expression. “No, the fae are warning me.” His black gaze bored into hers. “Martin is coming.”

Ellie suppressed a bitter laugh. Of course Martin was coming. Cam had held a knife to Mathilde’s neck. He’d effectively held a knife to the House. Mathilde and her father would never release them with a smile and a “Let bygones be bygones.”

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s at least do what we came here for so that this nightmare won’t have been for nothing.”

They picked up the pursuit, Cam distracted by things beyond her perception, as if in a waking nightmare. He caught her, though, when she almost fell into a sudden gully—that strange strength a seemingly effortless shift for him. Again, she had the disturbing sensation that she didn’t know him. Or didn’t know all of him.

They found Slight held aloft, midair, her shadow’s hand to his throat. His face was purple, a fat blue vein bulging on his forehead. His back was up against some kind of invisible barrier, which Ellie figured had to be Martin House’s wards. Nothing went in or out without Gunnar Martin’s permission, a problem that they would soon face when they tried to escape.

At the moment, the wards had trapped Slight.

Her shadow shook with the need to crush Slight’s neck. Ellie could feel the dark madness of it within, like a warped echo twisting her soul.

For the first time in a long time, she was scared of herself. Slight couldn’t hurt either of them at the moment, yet she wanted to hurt
him
badly. She was a bully with a monster’s strength.

Cam had known what she was capable of. He’d known a long time ago, way back when he’d first met that angel who’d put the two parts of her together. He’d been very careful with her ever since; it was time she was careful too.

She could not kill like this. Cam was right: the act would loose her shadow. A year ago the shadow had been dangerous; now it was deadly.

When Cam let go of her, she kept back.

He rolled the hilt of the knife between his hands and started forward. Ellie didn’t need to look at him to know his expression, those black eyes burning with magic; she could see a reflection of it in Slight’s fear.

And then Slight shivered and fell back on the earth with a hard, hollow
thunk
.

Her shadow tried to reach him but was stopped by a barrier. Cam tried too, reaching a hand out before him and quickly pulling back as if singed. The wards.

When Slight stood up, tears flowed down his face.

Gunnar Martin had opened his wards to the stray, which he must have done in the past so that Slight could train. But this was different. Slight had been
protected
by an act of Martin House, when Martin would never stoop to protect a stray. A House protects its own, which meant Slight was a stray no more. It was a mage fairy tale come true.

Cam turned abruptly, looking into the trees, as something bit Ellie on the shoulder; a mean sting of pain, followed by a numb coolness that quickly spread across from her arm and neck to her mind. She fell, surprised at how cloud soft the ground was and how the world continued to move after she’d stopped.

Cam leapt to shield her, hoarsely shouting, “Help us! Help us!”

She knew he was calling to his invisible fae. He could see them, but her very smart man didn’t seem to comprehend that they weren’t actually there. Cam himself had explained to her the symbiosis between the Other world and this one; they coexisted yet remained divided. Why was it so hard for him to understand now?

The coolness spreading within muted her thoughts so that the scene before her was almost abstract.

A mage—Nial, if she remembered correctly—emerged from the trees and bound Cam with snakes of black magic, pulling him thrashing to the ground. She witnessed only a little of the attack before Cam fell out of sight behind her. Her shadow hadn’t defended him.

She arched her neck to see her shadow, knowing exactly what she’d find. Her darkest, deepest self was as transparent as a ghost, a weak wisp of air, and would dissipate utterly . . . now . . . as her consciousness drifted.