Shadowman (29 page)
Authors: Erin Kellison
“Abigail's passing.” Layla's heart clutched at Zoe's racking sobs amid the deafening roar of magic. If Talia and the babies were overcome by it, they'd be lost to the world, too. Oh, God. “Run!”
Layla got to the apartment door, which burst open, blasted by magic, to reveal the hallway. She held it wide for Adam and Talia to pass as dried fall leaves in storybook gold cartwheeled down the corridor. The smell in the air was all promises, exotic and heady, making her thinking fuzz. Again, it occurred to Layla how Segue hovered on the intersection of this world and the next, the present and the past, fantasy and the ruin of the world.
“Looks normal,” Talia said, though stricken with worry.
There was no time to convince them. Layla grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out into the hall. Pushed her toward the elevators. “You've got to get out, or it will take you and the kids, too.”
Adam was finally spurred to action. He jogged down the hallway. Layla chased, put a hand on his back to make him run. The hallway stretched and torqued, but Adam and Talia seemed oblivious. They went along on only her warning.
Whispering voices, sweet sounding, begged Layla to wait, to stay, to linger. She slowed, looking back toward the dark swirl of Shadow. Behind the vortex, she knew there'd be trees.
Now, finally, Talia looked back in horrified awe.
“Talia!” Adam shouted. He was at the stairs, holding the door with his body. The stairwell was a howling abyss, the steps a vertical careen downward. The only way out.
And far away Layla heard Zoe's cries, now muffled, as if she buried her face in her hands. One sister, hanging on to the other.
Something about it was familiar, too familiar, and since Layla had no siblings, it had to come from her before-life when a sister made the same soul-scoring sound. The pain stopped her in her tracks.
Adam had his wife around the waist. “Layla, come on!”
But she couldn't leave Zoe behind. That sound, a gut wail of grief, had anchored her. One last thing to do.
And besides, it was time for her to cross, too. Everyone, including Shadowman, knew it. She looked in the direction of the west wing. A bad little girl haunted that place, but Layla really didn't care.
She didn't want to force Shadowman's hand, but the time for choosing was past.
“Get out of here,” Layla said, glancing back at Talia. Beautiful Talia. “I'm going after Zoe.”
“You won't be able to come back,” Talia said, the awful knowledge in her gaze.
“I know what I'm doing,” Layla answered. She hoped her eyes communicated as muchâespecially the “I'm so glad I got to meet you” that was bursting her heart. “And I'm not supposed to come back.”
Shadowman would just have to come after her. He wouldn't leave her to go mad. He'd pick up his scythe. Maybe this was the way it was always meant to be.
Zoe's sobs choked off, there was nothing for a moment, and then she screamed. Terror.
And Layla was off at a run.
Chapter 15
Shadowman crouched before the gate, darkness rolling off his shoulders, his cloak. The hammer lay askew beneath him. The dagger the angel had thrown was a silver dart on the ground to his side. Custo crouched as well, his skin riddled with black.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat: Open the gate. Let my throng deal with the angels.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat: Open the gate. Let my throng deal with the angels.
Shadowman lowered and inclined his head. “You sent a devil after Layla.”
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat: I can call the devil back. Set her on new prey.
“You'll do whatever suits you.”
“. . . man!” Custo was saying. “Don't even talk with it. The gate is not an option.”
Everything was an option, since no options were given to him: Here is love, but you can't have her. Here is life, but you can only glimpse it upon someone else's passing. You have great power, but you can't use it to fight for what you want. No liberty? Well, then,
Death.
Death.
“We'll find a way to destroy it,” Custo said. “There has to be a way. A different kind of tool, maybe. A different approach, something the world has forgotten.”
Across the cavern, the angels took up position. Ballard, now fully healed, stood in front, his hair matted with blood.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat
Now the gate laughed. It couldn't be destroyed.
Destroying the portal with heat and tools presumed it was made out of metal, but Shadowman knew different. Even if the black iron were melted away, still it would stand. Forever and ever until . . .
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat
It was maniacal in its glee, riotous as understanding came into Shadowman's mind. A wretched mistake among so many.
The gate was not made of metal, heated and pounded into form. He might have set out to create it that way, but the hammer had defied him, had forced his mind elsewhere. The hammer had required something deep, deep within to lift and wield.
The trick of the gate's construction, then?
Shadowman closed his eyes. A small breath, and already she sprang into his mind. Kathleen at her easel, gazing wide-eyed into Twilight. Kathleen under his hands, giving herself up, even as she seduced a dark lord. Her skin, her hair, her rising breasts as his mouth skimmed their peaks.
The gate was not made of metal. Black, or otherwise.
The gate was made of her memory.
He'd set this trap, and so killed her himself, no matter who gripped the hammer.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat: You created me to save her. Let me save her. I can save her.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat: You created me to save her. Let me save her. I can save her.
Death before him, death behind him. Every single thing he touched brought death. Even to the one he loved. He was cursed. If Moira were here, she'd be laughing. Stormcrow, Thanatos, Reaper. You are your nature; you are fae.
I want to change. I need to change,
he thought.
he thought.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat: Perhaps you think you can end this madness? If you can, pick up the hammer yourself and strike her down.
As if Shadowman could ever strike Layla. Crack her body. Make her bleed. The thought sent a blast of despair through the cave, the deep places in the earth bellowing,
No!
Nor would he let another. Not even if Layla asked him.
No!
Nor would he let another. Not even if Layla asked him.
His power, his ageless cruelty, stopped there. He was at the end of himself.
Then massacre the angels?
Shadowman eyed them from the folds of his dark cloak. Heaven's soldiers, set on a beast they had no hope to bring down.
Custo shook his head abruptly as if to clear his vision, or to get rid of a bothersome thought. What subtle things was Hell suggesting to him? Mortal minds, even mortal angels, were so weak. Eventually the gate would hit upon just the thing, and even Custo's great soul would falter.
The host advanced. A third broke away to circle and come at him from the left. Another third to his right. Conviction and purpose made them glow.
“I stand with you,” Custo said, “but I don't have it in me to kill them.”
Of course not. He wouldn't be an angel if he could. In fact, Custo would probably try to save as many as he could, while also protecting the gate. His purpose, like his nature, was at odds.
But Death was no angel.
“I'll do what I have to do,” Shadowman answered.
The walls of Segue stretched high as Layla ran through the center atrium to Zoe's side of the building. The roof was gone, and in its place was a ceiling of nighttime stars, the barren tips of branches fingering their way overhead.
“What do you want?” Zoe's voice echoed, laced with fear. “Stay back!”
A coded door almost stopped Layla, but as she gritted her teeth to find a working combination of numbers, the door itself became transparent, the frame an archway to the corridor beyond.
Fae voices whispered,
Coming, coming, coming, coming
, with each of her panting breaths.
Coming, coming, coming, coming
, with each of her panting breaths.
When she rounded the hallway to Zoe's room, brown vines crawled the walls, and standing in the way was Therese, the little girl ghost. Her hands were fisted, and a pout was on her face. Around her was an aura of another time, her patch of space a throwback to the hotel a century before. There, too, Shadow crawled, the climbing vines like stitches hemming the two realities together.
“Dead man, dead man,” she began to chant.
“Yeah, yeah,” Layla said, and rushed past the ghost. “Old news.”
Therese made a grab for her, clawing Layla's flesh and wrenching at the vessel she hoped to possess. Layla felt a jarring disengagement but moved forward anyway, the parasite on her back. Was it even possible for a ghost to animate someone else's body? Layla wasn't sticking around to find out.
The right angles of the floor and walls came apart, the structure of the building consumed by Shadow. Therese's hold turned into a clinging cringe as she found herself at the edge of one world and the beginning of another.
A shrill, startled scream from Zoe, and Layla advanced down the vestiges of the hallway. Either Therese would let go, or she'd be forced to cross, as she should have all those years ago. Zoe had to get out now, or be lost to Twilight. This was exactly the reason Shadowman needed to return to his post.
“Leave me the body!” the child wailed at her ear. “I need the body!”
“No can do,” Layla answered. There was power in mortality; Shadowman had taught her that. Maybe it would buy her enough time for him to find her. Too long in Twilight and there wouldn't be much left to find.
An electric wave rolled toward her, and the remains of Segue were demolished, particles lifting into the air like snapping sparks from a fire. Layla could feel the advent in a hum that buzzed her senses and tightened her womb. Heart seizing in terrible ecstasy, she leaned into the crossing.
Therese released her hold, sobbing, “The body!” Her voice weakened with each syllable as she fled the tide, and then she was gone.
Layla ran through the trees in the direction of Zoe's room, the hotel now a thick forest of dark trunks and craggy branches. Roots elbowed out of the earth to stop her progress, but somehow her feet only glanced on the surface as she darted forward.
“Just stay the fuck away!” Zoe yelled, voice low and ripped with emotion.
Over there. A rising bramble blocked Layla's path, and she forced her way through. She could see Zoe and Abigail inside a small, squared-off clearing beyond, not unlike the dimensions of Abigail's bedroom. Zoe, dressed in Segue sweatpants and a T-shirt a couple days past clean, her black hair ratty, stood in front of her sister. Her face was blotchy pale, her eyes were wild, and her expression was equal parts grief and horror. She was braced to fight.
Abigail stood directly behind her in a faded green housedress. Her eyes were hollow, jaw was slack with exhaustion. Her posture listed to the side. The only clue that she was still alert was the whimper that escaped when a swarming cloud of Shadow skimmed her skin, as if seeking a point of entry. A second flitted around her shoulder. A third patch of darkness webbed up her calves.
But Zoe didn't strike at these. She fought the air as if someone or something was in front of her, preparing to attack.
“Get back!” Zoe screamed, swatting at nothing.
Had madness already set in? That quick?
“Shit!” Zoe darted to the side in front of Abigail, who was now overcome with visible shivers. She jabbed. She flailed. But at what?
“Zoe!” Layla called.
Zoe's attention snapped in her direction, but she didn't look as if she believed her eyes.
“I'm coming,” Layla said. The thorns on the small branches snagged her clothes and scraped her arms as she pushed forward.
“They're everywhere!” Zoe hollered back. She circled around her sister, grabbing her arm to keep her close, to pull her back from the invisible dangers.
Layla peered into the surrounding trees as she trampled forward.
Coming, coming, coming,
soft voices whispered around her. But she couldn't see who spoke.
soft voices whispered around her. But she couldn't see who spoke.
At the edge of the overgrowth, she felt a wet brush on her neck. A lick. She whipped back to find a creature craning over her shoulder, tall and thin, with backward limbs like a praying mantis's. He was naked, gray, with wagging human genitalia.
“Kiss me,” he said, voice reedy.
Layla stumbled and fell into the clearing. The impact jarred her senses, and in the hard blink of the fall, a dozen . . .
things
sprang up around her.
things
sprang up around her.
“What the fuck are they?!” Zoe screamed.
Layla skittered back from the insect man, bumped into another. Blue. With sketchy human features on a humping shell of a head. Its eyes lit.
Coming, coming, coming,
it said to her.
it said to her.
Layla lurched upright, but now she was surrounded, too. “No idea.”
They were queer, deformed creatures, each with some attempt at a human feature on a misshapen body. Their curiosity had a predatory quality, a wow in their eyes, like they'd found shiny toys or treats, and even better, ones that talked. Their wonder kept them from leaping en masse. They weren't fae. Then what? And so many of them.
Layla's breath came quick, heart drumming so loud in her ears she almost wished it would stop so she could hear and think. But then she'd be dead, so maybe not.
“Shadowman!” she screamed.
The creatures recoiled slightly, and Layla took advantage of the brief thinning to join Zoe and Abigail. They stood back to back, though Abigail was all but useless.
Zoe grabbed Layla's wrist with her free hand. “Are you here?”
Layla knew what she meant. “Yeah, it's really me. We just have to hang on. Shadowman will save us.”
Any minute now. These creatures had picked on the wrong people.
Coming, coming, coming,
they chanted at them, inching closer.
they chanted at them, inching closer.
“Abigailâ” Zoe began helplessly.
“Don't worry,” Layla said. Her chest hitched with the sound of Zoe's pain. “He'll take care of her, too.”
Except there was no way out for Abigail. Her body was utterly wasted, eaten away by her tremendous gift. Segue had been her hospice while she declined toward the inevitable. If there'd been any medical recourse, Adam would have pursued it long ago. They were all here because Abigail, so full of Shadow in life, had died and Twilight had come to claim her.
Zoe's labored breaths dissolved into a sob. “It's not fair!”
“Shhhhh,” Abigail whispered. “Let me go, Zee-baby.”
Zoe swiped tears from her face. “Nope. We're in this together. You and me to the end.”
One of the creatures made a fast click with his teeth. Reached bony hands toward Layla. She slapped him back, but the contact blasted her senses. She struggled to keep her balance, blinking away stars.
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