Warrior from the Shadowland (17 page)

Uriel
swallowed.  “We really do need to focus on my mission to find the Quintessence
and guard the Water Phases.  And there are many questions about your
grandfather that need to be answered.  And the Air House could attack.  I’m
taking too many chances with your safety…”  He trailed off with a groan.  “Oh,
Gaia.  Right there, my love.”  He tilted his head back.  “Yes.  Perfect.  Just
like that.”  He drew in a harsh breath.  “Good.  Harder.”

Melanie
moved her hand faster and leaned forward to nip the side of his jaw.  “I’ll
help you find the Quin-whatever person you’re looking for.  You shouldn’t have
been messing around with a hospital database, anyway.  Trust me.  If you want
comprehensive DNA files, you go to law enforcement.  I’ll find you what you
need.”

Uriel
brushed her cheek with his lips.  “You are all that I need.”  He whispered, his
eyes glazed with helpless pleasure and total adoration.

Melanie
realized she was
so
getting fired for this.  Luckily, Uriel was
completely worth it.

These
water-galls in her dim element

Foretell
new storms to those already spent

William
Shakespeare- “The Rape of Lucrece”

Cross
knew he had a big problem when he saw the castle.

It
was a magical fairytale concoction of sea foam colored bricks and impossibly
curved turrets.  Sitting beside a waterfall that poured into a crystal-clear
ocean far below, the palace afforded perfect Caribbean blue vistas from its
hundreds of delicate balconies.  For an endless heartbeat of time, Cross just
gaped at the scene before him.  He’d spent his life in thick, gray shadows, so
this intense saturation of color and light was… amazing.  The vibrant flowers,
and the bright summer sky, and the azure waves that stretched out in every
direction.  It was the most beautiful place he’d ever seen.  Ever imagined.

He
didn’t belong here.  That much was pretty damn clear.

These
lands felt protected and clean, two things that had never been part of Cross’s
life.  This place was a haven for artists and intellectuals and peace.  From
the Minoan-style dolphin murals gracing the walls, to the barely there hint of
soothing ocean breeze in the air, everything here had Water Palace written all
over it.

Cross
had never visited the Water Kingdom, but he knew the most coveted, prestigious
kingdom in the Elemental realm when he saw it.

Fuck.

He
was standing in Nia’s memories.  That usually only happened after Matches
actually Phazed.  And even then, the memories tended to be a lot less vivid
than this.  Or so he’d heard.  This was so real that Cross might as well have
been a time traveler reliving the moment.

The
damn Phazing was trying to leak past his defenses.  Trying to force him to
share the weight of the Shadows with Nia and complete the Match.  It thought it
could beat back his resistance and make him Phaze with her.  Maybe it could. 
Because, the pressure of his need for Nia was growing as heavy as the Shadows. 
He wanted her so badly it ate away at his good intentions like acid.  What the
hell was he going to do?  He couldn’t risk hurting his Match.

Couldn’t
be like his mother.

Another
thought, almost as terrifying, suddenly occurred to him.  If he was looking at
Nia’s memories… than she was probably looking at his.

Cross
felt a hot/cold sensation of dread slide down his back.  There was nothing good
in his head.  Nothing he wanted Nia to see.  Certainly nothing like this
idyllic, pastel paradise she’d grown-up in.

Cross
automatically tried to break out of the memory and get back to the present so
he could stop her from learning anything about him.  The memory exchange was
really happening instantaneously, no matter how long it seemed like you were
away from the real world.  If he didn’t hurry, Nia would relive ever horrible
thing he’d ever done and she’d leave him.

Renounce
him.

Women
of the Water House weren’t afraid to renounce their Matches and go their own
way.  Everyone knew that.  Nia could do it.  And if she saw into his memories
she’d dump his ass like toxic waste.  Cross knew it would be best for her to
escape him and the Shadows, but he couldn’t let her go.  He’d die first. 
Gratefully.  She was the only thing in his world.

He
made a grab for the Shadows, trying to harness the oppressive weigh.  The
powers worked for him around Nia, but here in her memories all he got for his
efforts was a migraine.

“Shit.” 
He even got headaches in memory spaces?  Typical.

And
then he heard the laughter, clean and soothing and filled with happiness.

Nia.

Cross
instinctively turned towards the sound and found that the scene had shifted,
dream-like, so that he was in a courtyard, now.  As he watched, Nia dashed by
him holding a kite.  A little Nia, no more than a child.  Her eyes were on the
sky as the bright flash of silk sailed into the perfect sunny sky.  Tharsis
jogged along next to her, grinning.  “Don’t let it go too high!”

Nia
shook her head, red braids swinging.  “It’s impossible to let things soar too
high.”  She declared, importantly.  And stuck out her foot to trip her twin,
laughing harder and he bounced back up to chase her.

 Then,
Cross was in a nursery of some kind, decorated with the palest blue and purest
whites imaginable.  An older Nia lay on her stomach in the center of a rug
patterned with seahorses and shells.  She was reading to a toddler and, from
the baby’s fuzzy red hair, it could only be Ty.  Ty had apparently always been
a quiet little thing, because she sat cuddled next to Nia, watching calmly as
her cousin turned the pages.

“After
the Princess was captured by the Dark Phase, she was very afraid.”  Nia adopted
a higher pitched, singsong-y tone as she added in the character’s voice for
Ty.  “‘Oh!’  The Princess cried.  ‘Who will come and save me from this
monster?’”  Nia stopped reading and frowned.  She flipped forward a few pages
and rolled her eyes.  “Lord, but this girl’s a twit.”

Against
his will, Cross felt his mouth quirk at her annoyed pronouncement.

“Wead.” 
Ty ordered.

Nia
sighed and went back to the story.  “The Dark Phase locked her in a tower so
high that the Princess could see for miles out of her window.  Each day, she
stood by the glass and waited for help.”  Nia stopped again and scrutinized the
picture accompanying the text.  “Come on, the Princess could fit out of that
window if she wanted to and just climb down!  This is crazy.  I think she
wants
to be there with him.”

“Wead.” 
Ty repeated.

Nia’s
eyes briefly went up to the gilded cloud fresco on Ty’s ceiling, but she
pressed onward.  “The Princess was so lonely in the tower.  How she longed for
her handsome knight to ride to her rescue.”  Nia made an aggravated sound and
looked over at Ty.  “She’s going to sit up there and wait for that idiot blond
guy to show up and save her?  What kind of message is
that
?”

Ty
stuck her thumb in her mouth.  “Wead.”  She urged around her tiny little digit.

“No.” 
Nia slammed the book closed and focused on Ty.  “Princesses don’t wait to get
saved.”  She said, firmly.  “Any woman with a brain in her head would stop
whining by that damn window and find her own way out of the tower.  Unless, of
course, she was deliberately avoiding that boring knight guy and was staying
with the
way
more charismatic Dark Phase, on purpose.”

Cross
could no longer hold back his smile.

Ty
sent the book a longing look.  “Wead?”

“We’ll
read something less chauvinistic.”  Nia petted a hand over Ty’s head.  “How
about something human?  You like human poems.”  She got to her feet and returned
with a red leather volume entitled
The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe
. 
“You know, the humans are right, Ty. 
Nothing’s
more important than love.”
 She settled down again and opened the massive tome.  “If the Princess could
have loved The Dark Phase, then she should have given him a chance, don’t you
think?  And, if not, she should have escaped the tower, all by herself.  Instead
of just sitting around, waiting for life to happen to her, she should have
taken a stand.  Princesses
fight
for what they want.”

Ty
slapped a hand down on an open page, clearly not interested in philosophy. 
“Wead.”

“Alright,
Alright!  Gaia, but you’re a bossy little thing.  Where do you get that from,
huh?”  Nia cleared her throat and turned her attention to the book.  Her voice
went softer as she began the poem, “It was many and many a year ago, in a
kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived…”

The
scene shifted again and Cross was in another bedroom.  This one could only be
one of the royal chambers.  A massive four-poster bed draped in rich blue
velvet stood in the center of the circular space.  All of the floor-to-ceiling
windows were closed, the matching drapes pulled tight against the light.  Ty
sat in a corner sobbing, her face in her hands.  Tharsis paced, casting fitful
looks towards the bed.

Cross
felt a sinking sensation in his chest.  The Fall.

“What
do you mean you’re leaving?!”  Nia looked frazzled in this memory.  Her hair
was twisting free from its intricate arrangement, her eyes lit with wild
desperation.  “You’re the royal doctor!  You can’t
leave
.”  She grabbed
the man she was shouting at by the front of his robe and actually shook him. 
“You fucking fix him! 
Now!
”

The
doctor was sick himself.  Cross recognized the beginning stages of the Fall in
his pasty skin.

Cross
wasn’t sure when this memory had happened during the week of the Fall.  In the
Shadowland, by the third day of the epidemic,
everything
had begun to
break down.  It wasn’t just the disease.  A lot of the horrors of the Fall came
from people reacting to the deaths surrounding them.  Looting.  Violence. 
Doctors refusing to treat anyone.  Windows of locked stores smashed in as Phases
tried to steal any kind of medicine they could find.  Houses deserted as anyone
strong enough fled and left the dying behind.  It had been a chaotic and
terrifying time for the sick and for the immune.

Cross
hadn’t worried about anyone’s safety as society disintegrated around him.  He
figured he could take care of himself and if everybody else
couldn’t
… too
bad.  But, for Nia, it must have been a living nightmare.  She cared too much
about people.  Like the Shadowland, the Water Kingdom had obviously begun to
crumble as the death toll mounted, leaving healthy Phases without any of the
support systems of normal life.  Nia, Ty, and Thar were the only Water Phases
to survive.  What the hell had they seen?

Cross
felt his own anxiety level rising as he watched Nia try to find some steady
ground.

“It’s
in Gaia’s hands now, Princess Nia.”  The doctor pleaded with a petulant whine. 
“We’ve done all we can.”

Nia
looked ready to punch him.  Cross wanted to help her.  “My uncle, my aunt, and
my
mother
… all gone in less than a day.  And now you’re just going to let
him die, too?”  She shouted.  “If my father goes, you’re next.  I swear it.”

The
doctor stepped back, hastily.

“Nia.” 
Tharsis was there pulling her back and folding her into his arms.  “Honey, that
won’t help.”  Thar seemed defeated.  He knew that his father was dying, but he was
too drained to process it.  From the look on his face, Cross realized that
Tharsis also suspected that the doctor was ill.  He wanted the man gone, either
out of some heretofore unknown sense of empathy or, more likely, because he was
worried that the doctor might pass his germs to Nia if she kept getting in his
face.  “There’s no cure.  Dad’s sick and there’s nothing anyone can do.”

“No!” 
She shoved away from him and headed for the mattress.  “Daddy?”  Her voice
cracked on the word and Cross felt his heart break.  “Daddy?  Can you hear me?”

Cross
followed her to the bed, wishing he could do something to fix this memory for
her.  Nia’s tears were killing him.  “God, baby.”  He whispered, even though he
wasn’t really there.

“Daddy?” 
Nia climbed up onto the mattress to sit closer to the man huddled under the
blankets.  “It’s Nia.  Daddy,
please
fight this.  Please, don’t leave
us.”

Cross
looked back over at Thar.  The doctor had scurried out of the room and Nia’s
twin slammed the door hard enough to shake the palace on its stone
foundations.  “Son of a bitch!”  He scrubbed a palm over his face.  “He was the
last doctor well enough to even stand.”

Ty
didn’t so much as jolt at the sound.  She kept weeping as if her soul had been
ripped out.

“We’ll
find another doctor, from a different House, then!”  Nia insisted.  “Call
Freya, again.  Or Job.”  She laid a hand on her father’s chest as if commanding
each rise and fall through the force of her mind.  “Job’s not a doctor, but
he’ll come.  He’ll help.”

“The
other Houses have the plague, too.”  Tharsis locked the door to the bedroom. 
“You think I haven’t tried to contact Job?  Everything’s falling apart.  Job
could be dead, like all the rest.”  His eyes swung from Ty to Nia, and then
back again.  “For all we know, we’re the last three healthy Phases in the
universe.”  His jaw firmed.  “We have to get the hell out of Dodge.”

The
hairs on the back of Cross’ neck stirred as Tharsis moved a chair to shove it
under the knob.  Thar had called it “the plague.”  So, this memory had to be
taking place on or about the second day of the epidemic; before the Fall had a
name.  At that point, no one was even sure how the illness was spreading.  They
didn’t know who would catch it next or if anyone was truly immune.  Very few
Phases would have locked themselves in with a Fall victim, father or not.

Whatever
was outside, Tharsis was more worried about it harming them than the disease. 
That wasn’t good.  Not at all.

Cross
recalled hearing that the Water House had been struck first, Parald
specifically targeting Ty’s family.  Then, the Fall spread outward in
unstoppable circles to the other Elementals, like ripples in a pond.   The
disease had to have ravaged the Water House the fastest, giving them no time to
grasp anything but endless piles of bodies and an invisible killer. 
Nothing
should have been scarier than the specter of a merciless illness sucking the
life out of you from the inside.