Shadowman (18 page)

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Authors: Erin Kellison

BOOK: Shadowman
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Adam's face subtly tightened, but he didn't respond.
“Really.” No one ever believed the crazy shit she saw. She figured Adam would be different. “Ask Khan.”
The cleanup team worked a slender spatula tool into the earth, and Adam turned back to monitor their work. She reeled back coughing when the movement of the remains sent fresh stink into the air. Okay, discussion over.
She shivered again. Her ears ached from the cold, though the sun was bright yellow through the trees. Time to get back, take some notes on what she'd witnessed. She had a vision of a wall of Post-its in her bedroom divided into three parts for the three worlds. Maybe if she asked very nicely, someone would get her a whiteboard and a handful of markers.
As she stepped away, Adam said grudgingly, “I'll check the tapes. Flying wraiths could be a problem.”
The trees and growth around her required some clambering and skin scratches before she got the few yards away she needed to feel comfortable calling for Khan to take her back.
“Khan?” She waited like a dummy for him to pick her up in his whoosh of darkness, but that didn't happen. Was he there, and not answering? Or had he gone? Either way, she'd have to walk the whole way back to Segue. Great. His mysterioso business was getting to her. Yet another thing to talk about.
A
pop
above had her whirling, her gaze searching the branches. A resounding
crack
, and she whipped to aim the gun overhead. Wrong move. A great, black branch hurtled downward, and she threw herself into the prickly thatches to escape its strike. Got the skin scraped off her calf and ankle. Lost her shoe.
She panted in shock as the men nearby crashed through the growth toward her.
Her heart wouldn't stop pounding, even as she felt strong hands lifting her and placing her on the cold earth. An army jacket was thrown over her shoulders, warm, while some guy took a look at her leg.
“Damn it, I forgot. . . . By violence or by
accident
,” Adam was saying.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he bit back. “I just fucked up, that's all.”
“I'll live,” Layla assured him, though the scrapes stung pretty bad. Whatever spray that soldier guy was using numbed the pain a little. No need to get upset. Just a branch.
Adam scowled, his face going red, so she figured she'd better shut up.
“I guess Khan's gone,” she offered.
“Yeah. I wish he'd told me first.” Adam gestured to a couple of men—one of whom had been her ruddy-faced escort, Kev, on the day of her ill-planned Segue photo op. “Get her back to Segue. Make sure Patel looks at that leg. She's prone to life-threatening infection, I just know it.”
“No, I'm not,” Layla interjected. Now he was really going overboard.
Adam lasered her with his gaze.
She put her hands up in surrender. “Fine. I'll see Dr. Patel again. But I'm fine.”
“And watch for bears,” Adam said to Kev. “If there are any left on the mountain, they're sure to come out of hibernation to be in these woods today with Layla around.” To her, he said, “You stay inside, take stairs very carefully, and chew your food well. Talia's not losing you a second time if I can help it.”
Chew my food? What?
Layla went very still, the blood in her veins rushing to a stop. Would these people never stop speaking in riddles? “What's going on?”
Adam's frown deepened. He closed his eyes, shook his head. “Never mind.”
“What did Khan tell you?” And how convenient for him that he wasn't there to answer the question himself.
Kev and his partner looked confused.
Branch. Infection. Bears. Chew her freaking food? Her stomach turned as she mentally added to the list: assault, car accident, gunfire.
“I'm going to die, right?” That had to be it.
Adam went still and looked at her with those tortured gray eyes of his. Finally, he exhaled. “Not if we can help it. Not again.”
There was a resignation in Adam's gaze, a sad kind of premature “You've finally got it.” So Layla worked fast to parse the riddle.
She was Kathleen, who had died. . . . Yeah, around Layla's age.
But she was still young. Healthy. She should have
years
ahead of her. This was nonsense. She wasn't going to believe it at all.
Layla looked up at Adam. “How much time do I have?”
His nostrils flared. His jaw twitched. “As far as I know, you've been borrowing time for the past twenty-four hours.”
 
 
Khan hung in the air like a crow, dark wings stretched over the wood, his eyes keen for signs of the living malice, called wraiths, or their even hungrier brothers, the
wights.
Wights.
They were bound to emerge, for one kind of monster would always beget another. Starve a wraith for long enough so that all humanity is eroded, its body self-consumed with its unforgiving hunger, and you have a wight. Adam's tight boxes wouldn't hold them. Gravity couldn't hold them. They had too little substance to mind mundane restrictions. Yet they were still not spirit, not ghost, and never could be, because they had no soul. Only their appetites drove them.
What Adam needed now was an old technology, one of earth, stone, and magic. A barrow, a grave. Khan would suggest something of the sort to Talia.
The sun was just cresting the horizon. Below Khan, in the forest, Layla was moving with Adam toward the remains of Khan's first kill, the wight who'd almost had her in its grasp. Dead now.
A sear on Khan's skin signaled the approach of yet another race to the field of battle, The Order, shining bright enough to light the bare lawns near the main building of Segue. The wraiths had come for Adam and Talia, but Khan knew the angels were here for him.
He hung in the sky considering their approach. The wraiths were dead or fleeing. Layla was in Adam's care, and yes, the angels had to be dealt with. They had the gate in their keeping. Eventually they would have to ask its maker how it might be destroyed.
After their first failed attempt, he'd been expecting them.
He left the wood, stretched across the sky, and gathered himself before the five angels who were situated on the dried lawn in a V, as if they were geese flying south for the winter. Custo stood in the ranks, coolly meeting Khan's gaze, even as Shadow roiled in the boy's eyes.
Khan did not concern himself with his appearance, as he did with Layla; they all knew who he was. Whatever their individual conceptions of Death, how they conceived the fae entity before them, Khan didn't care. To one he was evil-eyed, skeletal. To another, a dark, horned thing. To Custo, he was an echo of Kathleen's Shadowman, but harsher, more vicious, yet still a man.
The angels' combined presence scorched him, but he stood fast as his skin flecked, blackened, sloughed into darkness, then repaired itself again. In mortality, however monstrous the form, pain accompanied the burn, but he preferred it that way. It was something physical, earthly, to feel, and thus brought him closer to Layla.
The angel at the head of the V was yellow blond, with pale blue eyes, and slightly pink, fair skin. “I am Ballard,” he said. It was an old Norse name, meaning “strong.” “By now you know that we can destroy the hellgate you created.”
Quiet, somber conviction filled the air around the host—so they hadn't come to
ask
him anything; they'd come to state their intent.
Khan guessed what that was. “No.”
“Doing so,” Ballard continued, “will take the life of Layla Mathews, a life we know to already be at its end.”
“No,” Khan repeated, with greater force. He should never have let Custo take the gate in the first place. “You cannot. Such an act would be—”
Ballard held up a hand. “We would certainly do everything in our power to mitigate the pain she'd have to endure. None of us want to cause harm, but we know that nature, in due course, will eventually take her life.”
Not if Khan could help it. Not today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. They'd just found each other.
When the sun rose this morning, Khan had thought he'd soon fight a devil. It was a fight he could win without difficulty. In the mortal world, the devil might be stronger, faster, more vicious than humans, but it was still
mortal
and Khan was not.
His Shadow burned, his cloak whipping with his fury.
But never did Khan think he would have to fight the angels. In fact, via Custo he thought he'd found a reluctant peace with them. But if they sought to harm Layla, they sought war. Khan himself would strike the first blow.
“Think a moment,” Ballard continued. “Consider the alternative, the worst possible. She is bound to the gate, that much we know. To destroy the gate, she also must be destroyed. What if
the only way
to destroy the gate is to take the life that is bound to it? And what if she should die a random death, her fate bearing down on her, and our opportunity is lost? Should she die and the gate remain, it may never be able to be destroyed. We cannot risk that eventuality. We cannot suffer such a thing to exist on Earth. And let us not forget, she should be dead already. So we return to our first course of action: destroy the gate, regrettably killing Layla in the process. It is the only solution, and after great deliberation, Custo Santovari has agreed to take on this burden, as he was the one to give you the hammer in the first place.”
“You speak of murder.” Khan looked at Custo, who looked back, steady and sure.
“The devil that escaped Hell has already murdered nine people,” Ballard returned. “You should have told us you opened the gate.”
Khan hadn't opened it, but he wouldn't inform the angels and give them another reason to harm Layla.
War, then.
He reached long for Shadow and found it plentiful in the break-of-dawn filter of trees. Always at the brink of change was Shadow, ready and available. He'd need it all to fight the angels. And if they died and lost their souls, he would not care. He could teach them evil and darkness the likes of which no devil could contemplate. If the angels harmed Layla, he would do just that.
Ballard lifted a hand. “Hold a moment, before you strike us down.”
A black mist rolled across the grass, hissing as it met the shins of the angels. Khan would drown them in it while Shadow strengthened him. No angel was as old and canny as Death. No angel, even of Valhalla, could defeat the Grim Reaper in battle. Without Layla, he would become all his names, marshal the fae and knock down all the walls, all gates.
The angels stood fast, as was their nature.
In the midst of the gathering darkness, Ballard cocked his head thoughtfully. “Do you know how rare it is that the same soul is permitted two lives in mortality?”
Khan gave a fierce grin. His Kathleen, his Layla, could do anything she put her will to. That's how magnificent she was. And these emissaries of Heaven wanted to kill her?
“And to be reborn in a space of time so near to the last is . . . well, it's nothing short of miraculous. As far as The Order knows, it's never been done, and we maintain excellent records.”
Shadow darkened Khan's vision. He was filled with it, gorging in preparation.
“We believe she had to have a divine purpose in order to come back to Earth. She had to have some great work that only she could do to be permitted this second chance.”
“Layla came back for her child. Our child.”
Ballard frowned. “Over the millennia there have been countless mothers who have longed for their children with equal desperation. All of them had to wait. Kathleen, we believe, was no different in that regard.”
Kathleen was different in every regard, but Khan's attention was caught. “Then what?”
“We have no idea.” Ballard shrugged and smiled in spite of the darkness grasping up his legs, his imminent demise. “These are momentous times, and she was there, with you, when all things changed. So, while it would be prudent to take immediate action with the gate, we will wait and watch with great interest.”
Khan stilled, the Shadow rippling with his surprise. “You will not harm her?”
Ballard nodded. “Layla is on borrowed time already. I wish her Godspeed with whatever it is she's supposed to do.”
Never had Khan known an angel to lie, yet he was loath to believe this turnabout. But if Ballard spoke true, then for now, Layla was spared.
She was spared.
The Shadow on the earth thinned.
“There remains, however, the problem of the gate and the escaped devil. The Order has some small hope that you, as the creator, can dismantle it without harming Layla. At the very least, we'd like you to try in the event she should suddenly pass and the world be left with a gate to Hell and a devil run amuck.”

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