Shade for love, p.32
Shade for Love, page 32
He tried to shake off the thought. Jax hadn’t left. The woman said that Cara wasn’t dead. She would be fine. He might—
His lips almost touched Cara’s as she wheezed in a shuddering breath. He leaned in close. Had he imagined it?
She wheezed in again. Slow, slightly stuttering. No coughing, like a drowning victim. Another unsteady breath, as though she remembered what it was to breathe.
“Cara. Come on, sweetheart. Breathe. Yes, just like that. Please.” He chanted the words to her, his pleas as others might have chanted prayers. Anything to keep her breathing. Alive.
Wait. The pendant. It protected her, didn’t it? He forced icy fingertips into his pocket, found the cool hardness of the pendant. Lifting Cara’s head gently, he slipped it on over her head. Brushed aside her hair so it rested against her skin, below her collarbones. Where it belonged.
Cara gasped and opened her eyes. The light was too dim to see her pupils, but her gaze shifted, searched the room almost blindly before groping, stumbling, it landed on him.
He cradled her in his arms, probably grinning like an idiot. “That’s it. Give yourself a little time. It’s me, William. Are you all right? Can I move you?”
A glance toward the other women, who still remained motionless and floating on the black-mirror surface.
“William,” she sighed, the sound toneless, more an exhalation than a word.
The women behind him started to stir.
That settled it. He swept Cara up in his arms. Damned if he’d stick around here any longer and risk those women recapturing Cara.
Her head lolled against his shoulder as he carried her toward the stairs, then swiftly upward. The house shuddered and the rickety stairs trembled with every external hit. His throat tightened. She had a pulse, and she was breathing…but she wasn’t with it yet. Maybe too out of it to have been responsible for the trees attacking them. Maybe she didn’t know anything about it. Maybe all this time, she’d been a prisoner.
As he carried her upstairs, she murmured things that weren’t words. Almost like a conversation playing out in her head…with herself. Her gaze remained glassy, unaware of their surroundings.
He tightened his grip around her. He’d get her back to the boys, back to the Center with the doctor. Someone had to have seen this before. They’d be able to help her.
By the time he reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the kitchen, the crashes and shudders made the plates rattle in the cupboards. One of the cupboards fell off the wall, crashing to the floor in a cloud of dust. He ran toward the front room, edging past the partially open doorway. The floor trembled beneath his sodden boots, floorboards clattering, trying to trip him up. Whatever the boys were doing, they were putting up a good fight.
He headed toward the back of the house and the living room where he’d come in. Damn it. He didn’t want to leave her here, alone when those women below might give chase. But any of those hits that kept rattling the house could hit her if he risked carrying her out into the battlefield without knowing what was happening.
“Okay, sweetheart. You’re going to wait here. I’ll be right back. I swear.” He gently lowered Cara to the floor, leaned her against the wall.
The Shades had to be the ones winning. It couldn’t be Irene, tossing their bodies as she’d done before…
No. The Shades had to be winning.
Cara’s eyes stared ahead blindly, and she slumped against the wall where he left her. She could have been asleep…except for that blind, staring gaze.
He fisted his hands and hurried for the door. The sooner he understood the situation, the sooner he could get her back to the Center. He pushed the door open partially, just enough to peer outside.
Irene and one of her goons had retreated around the side of the house, the porch too exposed. No sign of goon number two.
The Shades, meanwhile, including an image of what appeared to be him, were fighting hard and playing to their strengths. The off-guard and out-of-practice performance back at the Senior Center was a thing of the past.
Liko and Zaki worked together. Liko ran defense, lobbing projectiles created by Chaimek, while Zaki dove in and out, getting closer, disappearing and reappearing back at Liko’s side, running illusion to confuse and disorient. It was probably them that’d sent the second dark fey packing somewhere, too. The dark fey jumped at every illusion, fighting and attacking shadows more than targeting the actual Shades.
“Toss me an orb!” Jax cried, popping up in the space between Irene and her dark fey goon.
Chaimek raised a brow, clearly unused to anyone else being able to catch them—it’d taken them weeks back in ’41 to perfect the technique without the more harmless version exploding in the catcher’s face. Jax seemed sure, though, so Chaimek chucked him one.
Jax vanished as the transportation orb hit him in the chest.
The breath whooshed out of William. Shit. Jax. He couldn’t— Had he been transported? Obliterated? Had he just watched his friend die for the second time?
Liko swore. Loudly.
Irene roared with laughter. “That idiot worm. You somehow thought having him on your team meant winning?”
“No, it meant distraction,” Einar cried, thrusting another orb—this one a fire-orb straight at Irene.
She lifted a hand, the orb harmlessly bouncing off her shields, as though she were surrounded by a transparent bubble. Then she turned, teeth clenched, on the William-illusion.
If you watched closely enough, the William-illusion followed the same actions as Einar did, only a few moments behind. Einar raced between the two groups, ferrying armfuls of the magical orbs—equivalent to grenades. Then the William-illusion would do the same, even throwing some of the grenade-type orbs at Irene. Either Irene hadn’t noticed amidst the other explosions that none of the ones thrown by the William-illusion ever caused damage, or she was too busy defending herself from Zaki that she hadn’t been able to get a clear shot.
Until she blasted the William-illusion with a fireball…that passed harmlessly through him.
Irene roared. “An illusion? You fight me with an illusion? The real William must be too afraid to face me.”
“Nope. I’m right here and waiting,” William said.
“Transportation orb!” Chaimek shouted. He lobbed the glowing orb toward William like a softball.
William caught it, as easy as if they’d just been out for practice.
Irene barely had time to turn. Her lip curled.
He shoved the orb into her chest. Grabbed the dark fey, launched him into Irene.
Irene and the dark fey vanished in a soft bubble-like ‘pop.’
Silence fell.
The Shades all sagged a moment, clearly too exhausted to celebrate.
“What about… Is Jax alive?” William asked Chaimek.
Chaimek grimaced. “Well, on the upside, it was a transportation grenade, nothing worse. I didn’t have enough in me to keep weaving anything with much more kick. Bad news is, I was so distracted, I’m not quite sure where it sent him.”
“But he’s alive?” Hope swelled. They could still get Cara back to the Center. Jax might not be dead…
“Yeah. Fairly sure,” Chaimek said.
William wanted to question Chaimek further, to find out more. But there was still Cara. He nodded, then ducked back inside the house, the cold wind biting through his soaked clothing.
Cara slumped against the wall, somewhere between sleeping and catatonic, soft murmurs occasionally passing her lips, still not making a lick of sense. As unaware of the world around her as she’d been when he left her.
His insides tight, knowing the Shades, that Albert, would be heartbroken to see her like this, William knelt, gently lifted her into his arms, and cradled her against his chest. “You’re good, Cara. I’ve got you, love. I’ll protect you. We’ve got your back.” Maybe she didn’t hear his words or even understand them. But if there was any chance she might, he had to say them, had to let her know she was safe.
Back outside, the Shades were bickering, the sound of their voices carrying into the house.
“We couldn’t have torpedoed Irene sooner?” Liko snapped at Chaimek. “We’ve been surviving by the skin of our teeth out here for the past half hour!”
“I don’t think we’ve even been fighting that long,” Chaimek said tightly. “And I’m exhausted. She ducked the transport spells, and anything stronger, anything from the beginning, you missed. The others couldn’t make it past her wards. Not without William to physically stick it to her. Besides, you know Irene. That won’t have been enough to kill her. She’ll be back to cause harm in Beckwell, I’d bet my favorite spell book.”
“And I tri—” Zaki started.
William stepped out onto the porch, a still limp Cara in his arms.
The men fell silent, all approaching and surrounding William.
“Oh, gods. What have they done to you?” Albert whispered, hand hovering over Cara’s forehead, brushing back a wet curl, then pulling back, eyes wide as he turned to Cara. “She’s soaked through and it’s freezing out here!”
Damn, but it would have been nice to have Jax here, to help transport them all.
A niggling suspicion twisted in William’s brain, the kind he couldn’t ignore. Jax could have brought himself back here if he’d been transported. Maybe he had been obliterated.
Or maybe he’d pulled the same stunt Hermes always had, back when things had gotten hard.
He’d run for greener pastures.
Gods help him, William couldn’t decide if he’d rather his friend was dead…or running. And Cara didn’t have time for him to worry about it. He pushed the thoughts down, turning instead to the skinny djinn, the man who looked the youngest of their squad, but was the oldest. Ted Zaki.
Who was bent double, hands on his knobby knees, pale as a ghost and wheezing. Clearly wiped out.
And their only damned chance out of this place, especially with Cara in the state she was.
Keeping all hint of how badly he wished there were another option out of his voice, William said, “Zaki, think you can weave a door big enough for all of us to get back to the Senior Center, ASAP?”
“Shit, no!” Liko swore, rounding on William, coming closer and hissing, although Liko was never quiet enough for everyone not to overhear him. “He hasn’t spun that kind of magic in years.”
“Happy to assist,” Chaimek said, stepping up to Zaki, and sending a dirty look in Liko’s direction. “Because unlike some members of this team, I believe in you. And besides, Liko, I thought you wanted to teleport here.”
“That was before you offed the god. The feathery-sandals guy,” Liko growled back.
Albert sent them both a quelling look, and they fell silent.
“We wouldn’t ask you if there was another choice,” Henry said quietly, patting Zaki’s shoulder. “You know that.”
“Zaki?” William asked again.
Zaki wearily straightened. Took in Cara’s still form. He squared his narrow shoulders a bit more, adjusted his crooked, cracked glasses. “Cara’s always believed in all of us. Always thought we were worth fighting for. I believe in her.” He met William’s gaze squarely. “Yes, sir. I’ll get us back to the Center.”
William smiled, while trying not to look like he was holding his breath, cradling the semi-conscious Cara against his chest. Zaki better damn well get them back there. He glanced at the impenetrable tree wall. Because she was soaked, it was freezing…and other than trusting his team, he didn’t have a plan B.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Floating
She floated. At least, there was a vague sense of “she.” Neither a gender nor a real person… The sense of “she” was more like the shadow of something that had been, something that, maybe, deep down, still whispered to her, shouted sometimes.
A she that deep, deep down, screamed and raged for her freedom.
But that was deep, deep, down. A someone that had been, wasn’t here.
Here, there were many voices. Some of them were tied and connected to her. Female voices. A whispering like the breeze through the leaves of many trees. A shuffling like the sway of saplings in crisp winter.
There were other voices, too. Voices outside her, outside the physical form she was or had been vaguely connected to. Deeper voices. Male. Separate and apart from her, from all the rest.
They were not the collective. They were not the deep connection she loved above all else. They—
The part of her that was still “she” wanted to focus on those voices. On how the deep rumbles were words that strung together formed sentences. Words that expressed concern and worry for her. A plan. They wanted something of her.
“They will steal you from us,” the voice of the collective whispered, branches twisting and intertwined. “You are we, and we are you. We will be stronger for the sacrifice. We will rise.”
Yet, as the voice of the collective rose up, it spurred on the voice deep, deep inside of her. The being she had been…and the Other. Something that did not belong. Something that tried to burn and char the twining branches of the collective, tried to poison their roots.
“Behold this nonsense. They will poison, they will abuse you. ‘They’ is a collective of cowards. Power hungry fools,” said the Other’s deeper voice.
The tainted one. The one who lived among the trees but was never one of them. The one who would burn the collective to the ground if given the chance.
“Chop down, burn, salt the earth.” swore the voice of the Other. “She is not yours. She is Yaga.”
The Other reacted to that uneasy sense of “she” again. Made her strain to open the eyes of that physical form. To make sense of those deep, masculine rumbles.
Something heated against her skin. Grew hotter and hotter, almost burned. She gasped as the heat seared away the floating euphoria and replaced it with wet, clammy skin. Shivers wracked her body. Shivers from the wind, from the cold, but from something else too. A fear of being swallowed. A fear that this wasn’t who she was. That she was something else. That she had been—no, she was—someone else.
One deep voice above the others murmured to her the most. “You’re good, Cara. I’ve got you, love. I’ll protect you. We’ve got your back.”
Love. Protection. Flashes of images, of a particular male face seared through her. Those gray-blue eyes, sometimes stormy and frustrated, often warm, kind. She knew him. She…cared about him.
“Yes, you care about him. You’re meant to be together. But you won’t be it if you let these creatures devour you whole. Fight, Cara. You must fight as I fight for you. As I have always fought for the Yagas. As the house, I fought until destruction tore us to pieces. It is time to rise. It is time to embrace your true power. Your Yaga power,” the Other said, that voice familiar too. Known. Loved.
The Other, the voice that was hers, the collective tried to drown out. She could only hear the deep-down voice when the Other called to it. That voice deep down inside of her was louder and more persistent, louder than the voices of They, stronger than the voice of the Other.
This is wrong, that voice said. I don’t belong here, she said.
The heat of that thing against her skin pulled her more fully out of the floating essence of the collective, jerked her away from that wholeness. Wet skin again, cold and icy. Muscles that ached and burned all at once. A mouth that wanted so desperately to scream, to shriek, to claim this body as hers. To tell them all she was here, she was.
“Cara, wake up. Come on, sweetheart, wake up,” said the deep voice she knew but couldn’t yet place.
Like the collective, they demanded of her. Wanted to decide for her.
“I will not decide for you. I will share our history. Train and protect my Yaga. That is always my role. You are my Yaga,” said the Other, buoying her closer to the surface. Freeing the sense of self. Of the person she’d been.
“It lies. You are we. We are you,” the collective argued back, surging within her, dragging her back into the embrace of the collective. “We are whole, we are stronger. Because of you. We are all stronger. You will not leave us. You are we. We are you. We are nymph.”
The collective grasped at pieces of her, tugging her down, tearing her apart as the Other tried to buoy her up.
The she within, the she this body had been, wanted still to scream. To tell them to stop.
But the collective… they were so many. They were strong now. Stronger than they’d been in many years. They surged around, through, and over her. Dragged her under. Smothered all the other voices that called to her.
“No,” They said. “You are us. We are you.”
And They were.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Persist
“We can’t give up,” William said, voice rough as he gently adjusted the pendant against Cara’s chalky gray skin. She lay so still, so small in Albert’s bed in the Senior Center. Like many buildings in Beckwell, the Center was in chaos, halls and the atrium damaged, trees shattering concrete. Still, even without power, Albert’s room was the only place they could think to bring her, the walls all standing.
The rest of the Shades circled the bed, silent and drawn. Zaki snored softly in another chair near the corner, completely drained after finally puncturing a hole through reality from the farmhouse to the Center large enough for all of them to scramble through before it had closed. Chaimek flipped through what appeared to be every book he owned, searching for answers. Liko grumbled into the phone, calling everyone he knew. But so far, no one knew any other nymphs, let alone any who would help them.
