The Conclave of Shadow (3 page)

My inexplicable discomfort grew, an impending twitch between my shoulder blades that refused to shake loose. I had no desire to be a part of this. I skirted the crowd around the ‘Be a Skyrocket!' interactive exhibit, which looked more like a full-body video game than something belonging in a museum. Moving further around the edges of the atrium, I traced the history and accomplishments of Argent back to her origins, until I came to the exhibit I was most curious about and least wanted to visit.

“Shoulda figured I'd find you over here,” said a voice behind me in a soft, Midwest drawl.

“Tom.” I didn't look at him, didn't look away from the blank paper face of the figure in the familiar suit, trench coat, and fedora. They'd done my mannequin in a dark grey instead of creamy white, and the lighting in the installation was purposely dim, a corner of darkness in the bright, space-age atrium. I'd braced my hands on the railing to counter a strange sense of vertigo, looking up at self-not-self.

“It's good, though. The exhibit, I mean. And also, this display. Good to remember where we come from.” Tom Carter came up beside me and thumped the little placard explaining that Mr Mystic's association with Argent had always been complicated. I suspected Abigail Trent's snark behind the carefully worded text.

I sighed and released my grip on the railing, forced my flirtation with the uncanny back to manageable levels. There was no deeper truth hidden in the display's shadows, nothing to learn here that I didn't already know from news clippings and my grandfather's rarely updated journals. “In this case, it's hardly memory that draws me. It's narcissism.” I paused, tilted my head since he wouldn't be able to see my smile. “And of course, avoiding the crowds. Professor Trent was to have been my buffer, but it seems she prefers the canapes to my company.”

“Heh, that woman and free food.” Tom's smile charmed, even in the dim light. That was Skyrocket. He brought his own light and energy with him wherever he went. He'd even managed to banish my dour musings. “You know, I could take you around. Introduce you. There's folk who'd like to meet you but don't want to impose. And there's others who wouldn't mind a catch-up. La Reina says you still owe her for a dust-up you two got into way back in the day.”

“Do I? Fascinating. She has a better memory than I do, it seems.” I glanced around the room, recataloguing the attendees. Yes, it was a minefield of relationships I didn't fully trust or comprehend, but it was also as Tom said – a chance to unearth old stories that might help put the rest in context.

And also, I realized as I noticed several staff photographers eying Tom and myself with cameras poised, a chance to make my fans incandescently happy with a bit of inadvisable gay-baiting.

“Why yes, Tom.” I placed my hand on his arm. “As my official escort seems to have abandoned me, why don't you lead me through the rounds?”

“…
S
o there I am
, flying across the Huangpu River with the Old Man dangling by his armpits and the biggest damned firefight I ever did see going off in the smog above our heads, and me only minutes out of recovery.”

“By the armpits? Really?” asked a young Canadian Ace with the too-on-the-nose sobriquet of The Mountie, who'd been gazing at me like an eager puppy since Skyrocket took me up to the living roof and into the orbit of a group of younger Aces. Beyond the group rose the rooftop's grass-covered model of the seven hills of San Francisco. Plexiglas bubbles inset into the domes allowed light to stream up from the atrium, limning a scatter of whalebone – vertebrae, ribs, baleen – set out to dry on the grass. In the street below, streams of sedans – and the occasional Uber – continued to drop off passengers. On the other side of the concourse, ground lighting illuminated the de Young Museum's strange, inverted pyramid.

I cleared my throat, as discomfited by the young Ace's admiration as by the story of my exploits as rendered by another. “Hardly my most graceful entry, I'll admit. And you,” I nodded at Skyrocket, “were rather spry for a man recently emerged from his deathbed.”

“Don't recall much in the way of spryness.”

“Jiu Wei?”

Tom smiled in happy memory. “Ah, yeah. She was quite a lady. Kissing her'd give any fellow a kick in the seat.”

“Who is Jiu Wei?” asked a pretty young woman with the sort of soft curves and features that marked her as one of the hordes of support staff that made the Aces possible in a modern world.

I suspected she had a bit of a crush on Skyrocket. “His nurse–”

“Oh, but she's far more than that.” The interruption came from behind us. I turned. David Tsung stood at the top of the stairs. Handsome, urbane, and far too like his grandfather for my comfort.

And at his side, wearing an exceedingly short crimson cocktail dress that made me want to wrap her in my coat and drag her home, was Mei Shen.

We hadn't spoken since her dramatic departure on the bridge, and we could hardly speak now, not with an audience. Not when I wasn't… myself.

“Yes, far more than that.” I cleared my throat of the frog that had set up residence. “But for the purposes of this story, nurse is enough. One doesn't wish to weigh down with unnecessary details.”

“Ah, but the details are where the devil lives, isn't that the saying?” Tsung glanced at Mei Shen, as though she'd know more about English colloquialisms than he did. “Paying attention to details can save one from much grief.”

“Mr Tsung. It's good to see you again,” Tom said, interrupting the extended silence that followed Tsung's pointed observation.

Tsung eyed the hand Tom thrust out in greeting before taking it. “It is?”

“Well, yeah. I know things got complicated at the end, but I still owe you my life.” Tom pulled Tsung – and by proxy, Mei Shen – into our little circle of gaping Argent employees. “Mr Tsung is the fellow who pulled me from the wreckage of the
Kestrel
and got me out of the Shadow Realms. Wouldn't be here today if not for him.”

Saving the poster boy for the Argent Corporation won Tsung enough approbation that attention shifted to him with demands for details. I slipped out of the group, took Mei Shen's arm, and firmly escorted her down the stairs and back into the Academy proper.

The bridge above the atrium was shadowed and empty of people. Good enough. We settled at the railing, the model of the
Kestrel
at eye level. Below it, the pool of pins rose and fell in time with the chatter of the crowd.

“I hope this time you have no plans of jumping over?” I murmured, gripping the rail and pretending to watch the crowd from above. I kept Mitchell's voice, his accent, his posture, but the irritation was one hundred percent my own.

“That might upset the guests.”

“How did you get in here?”

“David secured us invitations through a back channel. I suppose Mian Zi doesn't entirely have his claws in Sylvia Dunbarton.”

So it seemed. This wasn't a Beyoncé concert. Even back channel tickets wouldn't be available unless someone in charge had authorized it. I rubbed my face. “Mei Shen, just… promise me you won't do anything rash. I don't think anyone at Argent knows of your involvement in this. Tom never knew, and I'm not telling. I don't think Mian Zi is, either.”

“My role?” she snarled. “My role would have been to sacrifice David to stop my uncle, if you had trusted me to play it. Instead, you are the sacrifice. How are Mian Zi and I supposed to put an end to Lung Di when we must go through you to do it?”

“We'll work out a way.” I shot a worried glance around the room. So far, nobody seemed to have noticed our presence on the bridge. Even so, uneasiness tightened the muscles between my shoulder blades, and no amount of rolling or twitching them would dislodge it. Hello paranoia, my old friend. “We can discuss this later–”

“Because you are so afraid to be yourself. So afraid David or I will give you up.”

She turned away. I pulled her back and stepped in close. “No, because I'm afraid you'll give yourself away. I said before, nobody knows your role, but if they did… do you want to be marked as the terrorist behind the New Wall? They're looking for someone to blame, and you're a likely target because of your association with Tsung and the Shadow Dragons.” And now I was worried that I had made it worse with my flip comment to Sylvia.

Mei Shen's gaze flicked away. She hugged herself. “Now you sound like David. You're not this protective of Mian Zi.”

I sighed. I wanted to pull her close, rest my chin on her head, but even if I dared here and now, she'd grown too tall for me to do that. “That's because he has the support of the Chinese government and her people. You have… Tsung. And the Shadow Dragon Triad. Of course I'm more worried for you.”

Still hugging herself, she studied the suspended
Kestrel
and then lowered her gaze to the atrium's windowed entrance. “Mian Zi was always better at wei-qi. It is no surprise he had the better opening move. But this isn't a game of wei-qi. Don't discount me yet.”

“Never. You're my daughter. If you don't like the rules of the game, you'll find a way to change them.”

“Perhaps I will. Tonight is only the beginning.” She stepped back from the railing. “Mian Zi has arrived.”

I turned to see where she was looking. Sylvia Dunbarton greeted my son at the entry of the atrium, both of them obscured by a cloud of flunkies. For what was supposed to be a private corporate function, it bore a troubling resemblance to a State visit.

“Shall we see who takes the
ko
?” Mei Shen asked and headed downstairs. I followed, unable to think of a plan to avert disaster.

Lord save us all.

A
bby waylaid
me at the base of the stairs, preventing me from following Mei Shen. “There you are, Old Man. I'm fine with my date ditching me for my boss and Mr Apple Pie, but I draw the line at hot young things half my age.” She latched onto my arm and hauled me into the atrium. We stopped at a display on Disco Dana and Java Joe, two of Argent's more embarrassing Aces. The disco ball cast us both in moving spots of light. What about the 1970s hadn't been embarrassing? Argent had gotten off light.

Abby gave the display a rueful nod. “I know. I begged Sylvia to let me skip the entire decade, but she refused. Said the progress of the feminist movement and the EPA was too important, and it would cheer folks up before they hit Reagan and AIDS.”

“And yet you decided to downplay Argent's role in the oil crisis, I see.” Back in the entry hall, Mei Shen had reached Mian Zi. It looked like my kids were having a civil conversation, but I didn't believe it. They had the knack of speaking on levels that only twins could understand.

“That tar's on your name too, Masters. Now uncross your arms like we're having a nice conversation.” Abby scanned the room rather than looking at me. Her smile stopped at gritted teeth and tight lips. Most of her lipstick had been eaten off with the canapes. I glanced around the room, noticed several of the nondescript suits drift into clusters and back out.

I uncrossed my arms. Whatever was going on might just be more important than stopping my kids from creating an international incident. “What's wrong?” I asked, keeping my voice low. The shadows around my face meant I didn't have to fake a smile.

“Not sure. Mr Long's people had information about a suspected security breach. Passed it along as a gesture of goodwill. Our people are looking into it, but Dunbarton wants our Aces mobilized in case something goes down.”

Information? I wondered if it was the same warning Mei Shen had been trying to deliver. If so, Mian Zi had outplayed her again. “What sort of breach?” I scanned the room again, assessing.

“Electrical grid. Primary. Doesn't make sense. There's nothing of value in the Academy displays, unless someone really has it in for that albino alligator, and all the tech in Argent's displays is disabled or removed. And the alarms are on secondary backup even if there was something here worth stealing.”

“Quite a few civilians. Perhaps theft isn't the point.” The collateral costs of Ace battles were always a hot button issue, good for taking up a month of news cycles. It was the PR reason for exhibits like this one, and Argent's close ties with the NRA, and some would say Skyrocket's entire existence. His reassuring smile and plain-spoken Midwest charm seemed designed to comfort such fears. “What's on the primary grid? Only the primary grid?” In other words, what would fail if an attack on the grid succeeded?

“Only primary?” Abby shrugged. “HVAC, PA System, non-emergency lights, some of the–”

“Get everyone out. Now.” I was already moving, searching the crowd. Tsung. Where had Tsung got off to? Was he still on the roof with Tom?

“Masters?” Abby swiped for my arm. I shook her off and made for the stairs. The itch at the back of my spine finally gave way to a full body shiver. Lights. And Mei Shen had said her information came via David Tsung. I knew what was coming.

“Evacuate the civilians. Now. Before they attack.” I paused at the base of the stairs and tentatively reached out with my senses to prod at the veil between worlds. It was in shreds. Practically non-existent. I searched for my kids in the crowd. They were nowhere in sight, nor was Sylvia Dunbarton and her personal protection unit. All I saw were civilians.

“They who?”

The lights flicked out. Emergency lighting kicked in, sullen red and useless against this foe. The first screams started.

“The Shadow Realms.”

A
bby shrieked
as something from the depths of the disco display whipped out and wrapped around her waist. She chopped a deflecting hand through the tendril, but two more shot through the dissipating cloud, going for her arms.

She ducked, rolled, and came up with a gun.

“Don't shoot!” I caught the two tendrils – solid for me as they had not been for her – and tore the tangle of darkness out of its nest. Whipping it over my head once, twice, I cast it back into the Realms from whence it came.

“No shit, Masters. I'm not going to fire around panicked civilians.”

I hadn't even considered that aspect. “It wouldn't be effective. You're better off shooting at smoke.” Another shadow hurled itself at us, this one vaguely beast-shaped, with spiky fur and claws that reflected the dull red emergency lights. I struck it at sternum level, followed up with a front thrust kick, and opened up another conduit to the Shadow Realms for the beast to fall back into.

Except it was a temporary fix. With the lights out and the veil between realms torn open, anything I sent back could easily come through again. And, as Abby had said, there were too many confused civilians for one person to protect.

She stood by, holding the gun down at thigh level. “What's the plan?”

“Clear the Academy. Get people out into the light. Get the lights in here back on.”

“Right. Outside! Everybody outside!” Abby dug deep into her diaphragm to be heard over the confused ‘what's going on?'s and the growing cries of distress.

Evacuation wouldn't entirely protect the civilians, but at least there was light outside – headlights, street lamps, the de Young. I released my hold on my unsettled senses, usually clutched close as a church-lady's pearls for fear I'd brush up against something on the other side that I didn't wish to wake. Now, I flung them as broadly as I could.

Shadow couldn't just cross over in any old dark place, which was a blessing, or the world would be filled with every manner of terrifying folktale monster. Shadow didn't have the spark necessary to cross into our world. It required power on the Shadow Realms side, or else a bridge made by someone like me.

A bridge that had been laid at the Academy, now that I'd opened my senses enough to recognize it. In the pockets of darkest dark – the Planetarium, the butterfly dome, the sunken pool that housed Claude the albino alligator – the darkness broke open, and shadows poured out. Someone had deliberately created the bridge. Someone not me.

“The roof,” I yelled at Abby. “I need to find Tsung!”

Abby shoved a terrified young couple in the direction of the front exit. She looked over at my shout. “I don't know who that–”

“Did you do this? Are these your devils?” My arm was near wrenched from its socket when someone grabbed it and yanked me about. I blinked up at the woman, not recognizing her for a moment. She was taller than me, broad shouldered, dark skin, and darker hair scraped back in a severe braid. Liquid black eyes and a nose and brow as proud as Heaven's host.

La Reina de Los Angeles.

“Not mine,” I spat, yanking my sleeve from her grip.

“Then I have your leave to dispatch them to the Hell from whence they came?”

I snorted and gestured to the room. There were more than I'd ever been called on to exile at once. “If you think you can…”

She pushed past me, her wing nearly knocking me into the tide pool exhibit. “You may wish to seek shelter, little shadow,” she said over her shoulder. “I've no wish to sear you.”

Her wings lifted, spread. How could anyone seeing that graceful display think it was the product of a healthy special-effects budget? The vane of each feather glowed softly like the filament of an old light bulb just turned off. Except these filaments were growing brighter. Slowly. They burned my eyes, yet I couldn't look away. Deep in my bones, beyond the place that crawled and ached and itched whenever I touched the Shadow Realms, a deeper hunger rose up. A hunger for that light. I
had
to have it.

Something hit me in the gut, bowled me away from the light I was reaching for. I struggled, but my arms were pinned to my sides until the light snuffed out and sanity returned.

“Hey, Old Man. Snap out of it!”

Abby. Abby was shaking me, and none too gently. We were in the stairwell, the emergency doors shut against the searing light of La Reina's wings. From beyond the door came the screams of shadow creatures as they fizzled out of existence. They sounded disturbingly like screams of ecstasy.

“Wha–” My voice cracked somewhere between Missy and Mystic. The shadows around my face had been burned away. My cheeks and nose felt stretched like I'd spent the day on the Playa with no SPF protection. I cleared my throat and used the stairway banister to steady myself, gathering shreds of shadow and identity back around me. The renewed shadows about my face cooled my heated skin. Somewhat. “What happened?”

“Dunbarton gave me access to your dossier for the display, at least the parts that weren't redacted. La Reina's light hurts you almost as much as it hurts shadow demons.” Abby brushed my lapels, settled the little pin, straightened my tie, comforting by putting me back to rights. “You didn't know?”

I shook my head. The pain hadn't been half so unsettling as the deep yearning that went with it. I'd
wanted
to be incinerated by La Reina's light. “Now I understand how moths feel,” I muttered.

“You good to keep moving?”

“Do I have an option that isn't yes?” Depending rather too much on the railing, I hoisted myself up the stairs and headed for the roof.

The fighting was worse up top, and no surprise as to why. “Conclave knights,” I muttered. The shadows that served the Conclave weren't wild and chaotic like other shadow creatures. They were disciplined. Organized. The same sort of organization that would be required to stage an attack like this.

But the Conclave had never taken much interest in the real world that I knew of. Why would they start now?

The Mountie's scarlet coat and gold buttons were a colorful beacon, drawing the knights as surely as La Reina's flame had drawn me. He'd planted himself between the knights and the support staff that had been on the roof, using a thick, curved beam of pale wood to hold the armored shadow knights at bay. Skyrocket mowed down the back line with a comet-like flyby.

Of Tsung there was no sign.

“Worse trouble?” Abby asked.

“Yes, but at least this trouble is tangible,” I said. The Mountie took Skyrocket's pass as an opportunity to shove the knights back with his… what was that? A club? Tree?

Whalebone, I realized, recalling the scattering of ribs and vertebrae from before.

Abby drew her gun. “Good.”

We waded into the disoriented rear of the dozen or so knights pressing down on the civilians. I caught one from behind in a choke hold. Living shadow didn't need to breathe, but the closer it got to life, the more it took on the semblance of it. I'd seen Conclave knights bleed. I'd made Conclave knights bleed.

This one seemed desperate as any living foe to keep breathing. He flailed a gauntleted fist at me. I ducked my head against his back to avoid it, pressed harder until he sagged in my hold, and then forced him into the long shadows covering the grassy rooftop.

Abby had taken out two more knights to my one. I hadn't heard gunfire, so I assumed cold-cocking them had been her weapon of choice. I'd never met a woman who liked a good brawl more than Abigail Trent.

I sent her downed opponents to join mine across the veil and rose from my knees to face the knights who'd turned to meet us. Abby was locked in a tussle with two of them, which left far too many for me.

A streak of copper and silver landed at my side. “Hey, Old Man. These friends of yours?”

First La Reina and now Tom, assuming I had anything to do with this attack. “My friends have better manners,” I muttered. Nothing about this made sense. If this was Tsung's doing, then how did he manage to weaken the veil in both the atrium and the rooftop? And if it wasn't his doing, then where was he?

And either way, what interest did the Conclave have in an exhibition of Argent memorabilia?

“Then I guess we better teach them some,” Tom said, cheerful as always, and waded into the fray.

B
etween the four of us
, we were able to rout the knights handily – for the most part. While I was subduing the last few, shunting them back into Shadow, two of the remaining knights broke free. They dropped off the far side of the rooftop and escaped into the wilds of Golden Gate Park.

“I got 'em. The rest of you get to safety.” Skyrocket spared a wink for the accountant who'd been swooning over him and launched off the rooftop in pursuit.

I sighed and faced The Mountie, now using his whalebone to usher the civilians down the stairs. “Do you know where Mr Tsung went?”

“The fellow who helped Skyrocket? He was by the railing over there, then he hared out of here. We figured he was going after you and his date.”

“Do you think he had something to do with this?” asked the girl from legal-or-accounting.

I tugged my fedora brim lower. “Get them to the concourse,” I told The Mountie and headed for the rail separating the cement patio from the grassy hills.

Abby followed. “You think they did this.”

They. Not he. Abby had seen my argument with Mei Shen.
Damn
David Tsung for dragging her into this. The last thing I wanted was for Argent to target my daughter.

“I don't know.” I searched the railing and information placard with eyes and fingertips, looking for… I wasn't certain what. My fingers brushed something existentially unsettling on the backside of the placard. It reminded me of reaching blind under a paving stone to find a spare key and instead finding only slime and skittering. I recoiled, cursed, and hopped the rail to better examine the backside of the placard. A line of sigils was painted onto the brushed metal base. The last one smeared. I checked my fingers, and they were smeared as well with the same black paint. Fresh. That last mark had been fresh, as though someone had painted the others beforehand and then returned to complete it just before the attack.

“No. I don't think he did this,” I lied. I didn't want to think he'd done this, or that Mei Shen had been a part of it, but who else could have? I cleaned my fingers on the grass and stood. “We need to get someone up here with paint thinner. Have them check the displays in the atrium for similar markings. I need to find…”

I broke off, heading for the stairwell. I'd discovered the
how
of the attack, but I still didn't know the
who
or the
why
. It couldn't have been Tsung. Or at least, he couldn't have been working alone. Whoever had done this had access to the Academy in the days leading up to the exhibit. They had to have set up the sigils beforehand throughout the building, had to have known which grid to target to take out the lights, allowing the shadows free rein. It screamed inside job.

I stopped at the second-level exit, recalling the paranoia that had overcome me when I spoke with Mei Shen. I'd been sensing the rending of the veil somewhere close by, and I hadn't recognized it for what it was.

At least I could alibi my daughter. That still left Tsung. Or… several other someones?

“Masters?” Abby lowered her phone – she'd been relaying my instructions to the people who could actually do something – and paused a step above me. “What is it?”

I pulled out my own phone, cupping it in my palm. “Who besides you was involved in making the exhibit?” I asked. I quietly pushed open the access door and peered out. Down one direction was the bridge that crossed above the atrium. La Reina's light had been replaced by more conventional floodlights.

The other direction led through a darkened gallery. I spied movement in the shadows.

I held my finger to my lips to silence Abby's response and cocked my head in the direction of the movement. She nodded, darkened her cell phone, and drew her gun.

We slipped out of the stairwell, each taking one wall of the corridor. Soft sounds came from the other end of the gallery – the scrape of metal on metal and the creak of hinges. I reached out with my senses, but aside from the lingering unease that came with a thinned veil, I sensed nothing of living shadow. Whatever moved in the darkened gallery wasn't a shadow creature.

I nodded at Abby and we both came round the door frame, cell phones blazing light. I tossed mine on the floor in case I needed my hands free. Abby held hers atop the stock of her gun as a police officer might hold gun-and-flashlight in a film.

The double glow of phone screens illuminated a woman standing before an open case. No, a line of open cases with scattered pottery and display cards knocked askew. The woman's left hip swelled with the misshapen bulge of a duffel bag. The contents shifted with the hollow sound of pottery knocking into pottery as she turned to face us. She held her hands high, her braid swinging just above her ass.

I gaped. I knew her.

“Hello, Abby,” she said.

My companion cursed. “Asha. I should have fucking known.”

“Should you have? Because large-scale coordinated attacks are
so
my style.” Except for the incongruous duffel bag, Asha was dressed as one might expect of a cat burglar – black, form-fitting, many pockets, right down to the tailored gloves, save that these gloves were fingerless. She'd worn something similar the night we first met. I recalled that even after so many years. As well I should recall. That was the night I met Abby. That was the night Abby shot me. That was the night I decided to go to China.

“Hands where I can see them, bag on the ground,” Abby said when Asha reached over to close the display case that hung half-open between us. Asha sighed, rolled her eyes like a bored teenager, and let the duffel strap slide off her shoulder. It hit the floor with another grating shift of fired clay against clay. She lifted her hands again.