Of Shadow Born (7 page)

He laughed without thinking. He ignored the flare of indignation in her eyes. "My reference is the fact I tracked you down before anything happened to you. My business card says I just saved your life. Jesus. Are you this paranoid with everybody?"

She was still scowling at him. She took a breath to speak. Closed her mouth, took another, then glared and slammed the door. She stalked past him and back to the couch, where she sat, gripped the edge of the cushion like she might fall off and stared hard at nothing.

"This is crazy." The words came out a whisper.
He heard her take the next breath. It whistled going in. Another followed, then a third, each one shorter than the last. "I don't want to die. I can't breathe."

Kade
came around the couch and dropped to a knee on the floor in front of her. This was something new. She sucked in another short breath with an audible wheeze.

He scanned the room. There were shadows, yes, but nothing moved within them. No intruders. If this was another attack, how had they gotten to her? Something in the water she drank? Was Dalton in on this?

"Kade." She snatched for his hand and held on hard. "Purse," she gasped, then pointed. Her lips were pale.

He followed her finger, springing to his feet when he spotted her bag. She yanked it from his hands when he got close enough and dug through it frantically until she came up with a small cylinder which she put between her lips and squeezed.

The puff of air sounded loud but took almost immediate effect. "Asthma," she croaked when she could a moment later. She held up the inhaler. "Sorry."

Asthma. Kade heaved his own breath of relief. Not poison, not an attack. Asthma. And he'd been calling her paranoid.
He pushed off the floor and claimed the spot on the couch beside her. "You had me worried," he confessed between her quieter breaths.

She managed a wan smile. "Me too." When she could breathe silently again, she asked,
"The men. The ones who attacked me. They really blew away?" Her eyes were dark, color absorbed by her pupils. She wasn't seeing him now, though she looked at him. Looked
through
him. Kade could almost see the night’s adventure replaying in her eyes. She blinked and her gaze refocused. She came back to the present with a jolt. "I thought I'd imagined it. That impossible things looked like they were happening because I was nervous. Scared." She made an apologetic face.

He should comfort her somehow, he knew. He should let her believe she'd made things up, imagined herself in danger where no threat existed. But he'd taken that path before. When his father and brother asked him if things were under control, he'd told them he could protect them and keep them out of harm's way. It hadn't worked then. It wasn't likely to work now.

All he had was the truth in an answer. "They were real, but so am I. Don't have to be afraid of me. I'm on your side, remember? You just have to put those artifacts back together. As soon as possible."

She shifted
her weight, then leaned against him. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and sighed. He felt her posture soften as she trusted him to hold her up. After a moment, he slid his arm around her shoulders and she nestled closer.

"I can't even tell you for certain what all we've got. What are you expecting me to find?"

"A tablet." That was all he knew. It didn't feel like enough. "Broken, you know. There'll be writing and probably a lot of pieces. It's important that you find them all."

She tilted her head to look up at him
. "What's on this tablet that's so important? How big a tablet, for that matter? What sort of writing?" Her voice steadied. "What you and I think when we hear that word is very different than what an ancient culture would have used. They could put a lot of writing on something very small."

"I don't know." It frustrated him. Some secrets just got in the way. "Nobody does, one hundred percent. That's the p
roblem. Once it's reassembled, we'll know it for what it is."

"But it could have passed you by." She frowned
, sitting up a little. "If you don't know what you're looking for—"

Kade cut her off. "Trust me when I say that the second this thing resurfaced, bells and whistles went off. We didn't miss it. We know it's here, but what it looks like
..." He spread his hands again. "I'm not a historian."

"You're a bodyguard." Her expression changed, softened somehow. Kade didn't know what she thought when she looked at him now, but he liked the way it chased the worry out of her eyes.

"Yeah," he agreed with a little smile. "More or less."

"But you're like them."

That was a one-two punch. Lower his guard, then go for the gut. "Not a chance, not ever. Not like them." The ferocity of his words made her flinch and pull away. He made himself lower his voice. "People in the IU would call me a guardian, but bodyguard works. It's my job to make sure no one hurts you." And despite the fact that he still didn't want the responsibility, it was his and he would do his job until she was safe.

She studied him another moment then seemed to make a decision.
"I owe you my life." She moved before she'd finished speaking, leaning in close to brush her lips against his cheek. He'd turned his head to argue that she didn't owe him anything, and she caught the corner of his mouth instead.

It felt like being touched by the low current of a live wire. His awareness of her, not as a project, but as an attractive woman blazed back with force. The scent of her hair surrounded him again and the depth of the almost-green in her eyes drew him in as surely as if he'd clasped his hands and dove. Completing the kiss, turning his head that last little bit that made their mouths fit together didn't take thought or planning. It just happened.

They both realized it couldn't at the same moment.

She pulled back, pressing a hand against her lips. The look she gave him wasn't betrayal. It was suspicion and surprise.

Kade left the couch. It took every ounce of will not to dive for the shadows and put some distance between them. What was he thinking? The problem was, he hadn't thought. He'd just reacted. He knew better. He couldn't make mistakes and he wouldn’t get attached. Not to her. Not to anyone.

"Which one's the bathroom?" He'd started down the hall before he asked. He could put a door between them, at least. Get himself under control and get back to work.

"The second," she answered. "On the right. The light's outside."

"Thanks." He didn't touch the light switch, just stepped inside and closed the door. The darkness wouldn't bother him. The darkness brought him peace.

Chapter Si
x

No matter how she tried to get comfortable, Melanie couldn’t sleep. No, that wasn’t exactly true. She dozed in fits, dropping off just long enough that her dreams kicked in and reminded her of the evening’s excitement. Not that she thought she’d ever forget. The sound of the gun going off woke her every time.

She was still breathing, though. That had to count for something, given the way her lungs had been acting up lately. Asthma had been the bane of her childhood, keeping her from doing too many things. As she grew up, she’d learned to control it, to know her limits and how far she could push before she gave in to her body’s demands. She took her medicine like clockwork and always had an inhaler nearby, just in case.

She’d reached for it more often in the last week than
the several months before. Something had her stressed and trigger-happy.

Something like the man sleeping on her couch.

It wasn’t fair to lay all the blame at Kade’s feet, of course. For starters, she’d known him less than twenty-four hours. Unless he could time travel, he couldn’t be responsible for all of her attacks. The reason he’d come to find her, though? The things that had tried to kill her tonight? Those she could and did blame.

Which was still crazy. She was being stalked by shadows. What sort of responsible adult believed in the things that went bump in the night? Melanie preferred to deal with the world of cold, hard facts.

Or at least in the rules that made up the world she lived in. Art couldn’t always be measured on a scale, but the steps to produce it often could. She could test the pigments on a canvas to find the proportion of each ingredient. She could inspect a pottery fragment and pinpoint where in the world they’d gathered the clay.

Kade probably had ways to track the shadow creatures. He’d obviously known what they were the instant he saw them, not drawn in by the illusion of harmlessness that
had first entranced her. She’d been ready to march right up to
help
them. And if she had? The reward for her soft-heartedness would have been a sudden death.

“And on that cheery thought,” she murmured, pushing the covers back. If she wasn’t going to sleep, she didn’t want to be
stuck beneath them, unable to move. Even on a good night, she could tangle herself in the blankets so badly it took five minutes to get untied in the morning. Kade probably would have stripped the covers off entirely and ordered her to sleep on the bare mattress, on the off chance she’d need to move. Then again, a heavy blanket might make a good deterrent. She could fling it over an assailant’s head. Blind them temporarily, maybe knock them down. That would show Kade she could do something more than stand there and wasn’t entirely defenseless. She could stall them. She could run.

She had to stop thinking about
it. On any other restless night, she would have gone out to the living room, put something mindless on the TV and let it drone her back to sleep. She could listen to the radio or simply walk laps around the apartment. Tonight, she felt like she should stay in the room. He was probably still on high alert. If she made a sound, he’d come crashing through the door, ready to fight off whatever had come to harm her.

She wished she didn’t find the idea quite so appealing.

There was definitely something wrong in her head. Yes, Kade was handsome, but she hadn’t let him stay so she could ogle him or turn him into some kind of heroic fantasy. She’d let him stay because he knew how to fight the monsters.

Of course, she’d helped, at Hannadays. Granted, at his prompting, and not without a few stumbles over the unfamiliar words on her part, but she’d helped banish or destroy or disintegrate the shadow-m
en. If they came back, she could shout those words again and at least buy herself a little time. She hoped.

Of course, now that she was thinking about what she might do if faced with another attack, she realized she was sitting in a very dark room.
Alone. She’d never been afraid of the dark as a child. She preferred well-lit sidewalks but she’d traveled down more than a few roads with no street lamps to light the way. She couldn’t remember ever feeling like she ought to look over her shoulder.

She felt it now. She leaned for the lamp on her nightstand, switching it on with a very
sharp snap. She squinted against the light until her eyes adjusted. Once they did, she wasn’t sure she’d made the right choice.

In a room full of darkness, all shadows looked the same. Now, with some of them pushed back by the glow,
others seemed to huddle in the farthest corners. She imagined them leaning together, whispering about how she’d disturbed them. Why couldn’t she leave well enough alone, they’d ask. Well, if she wanted to play it that way, they’d just bring the fight back to her.

Her heart beat a little too quickly now.
Sometimes she hated her imagination. Sometimes it gave her just the push she probably needed to get over ridiculous fears and stop watching when she could act.

“All right,” she said, slipping off the bed. She turned to face those too-dark corners, though she stayed in the light.
“I’m not going to be afraid of simple shadows. There’s nothing in here that can hurt me. Nothing would dare.”

True to her belief, nothing stirred. Nothing made a sound. The shadows in the corners stayed where they were. She took a deep breath. Good.

“But if you did dare,” she went on, “I’d be ready. You won’t catch me off guard again.” There was still no movement. She was talking to nothing. No one heard her boast of bravery but it made a difference to her. She could feel her pulse slowing down. “It’s like that saying: fool me once? You won’t get a second chance.”

She rolled the top of her pajama bottoms over like she sometimes did with her sweats
at the gym. It helped to keep them on her hips and she felt like she might need to move. This little exercise was making her feel better, even if it assured she wouldn’t go back to sleep.

She bounced on her toes, being careful not to actually leave the ground. She could bob up and down, but if she really jumped, she’d shake the floor. That would catch Kade’s attention
no doubt. She didn’t need him right now. She needed to do this for herself.

“You thought you were dealing with someone who’d just collapse and cry? Think again, crazy shadow army. I’m not going to make it easy. If you want me, you’re going to have a fight on your hands.
”

Feeling brave, she threw a couple experimental jabs at nothing. She’d
seen fights in the movies. There were kickboxing classes at the gym. She could keep her hands up, bob and twist and square off against an unseen opponent. Shadow boxing, she thought, watching hers move with the motion, ducking and weaving as she did. Her silent companion.

Her too-tall, gangly, misshapen companion. Melanie’s stomach churned as, in the middle of throwing the next punch, it dawned on her just how long and spindly her shadow’s arms had become. The angle of the light behind her made it look odd, she told herself. There was nothing sinister about the shape
. Nothing she hadn’t seen a hundred times before. 

She stopped bouncing and let her arms fall to her sides. Standing this still, her shadow was nearly formless. Yes, someone would recognize it as human, maybe even female, but that was all. It was just a shape. No malice oozed from it. It didn’t threaten. It couldn’t intimidate on its own.

Melanie moved, stepping toward her shadow and the far corner where she’d imagined the conspiracy moments ago. As she got closer, leaving the light behind, her shadow shrank, retreating. By the time she reached the corner, it had all but disappeared, swallowed into the depths the light couldn’t quite touch.

“That’s right. In
my home, I’m the one in charge. You do what I say or you get wiped out.” It felt right to whisper the threat into the darkness. She didn’t need to shout to make herself understood. Recalling the words Kade taught her, she repeated them, brushing a hand through the air, not quite touching the wall. She imagined scattering the blackness, watching it recoil from her touch. In her mind’s eye, it would dissipate like the fog burning off on an autumn day.

It shouldn’t have worked. Nothing should have happened, and yet, as she swished her hand back through the s
pace, she swore she felt something move. Something clung to her fingers for a moment, like tendrils of cool mist, then slipped away.

She froze. Her heart was pounding again. She must have been closer to the wall than she thought. It could get cold in here on rainy nights. She
had a draft she’d never pinpointed before. She had not just felt the shadows move.

Except they were still shifting. Something brushed her fingers again, making her suck in a sharp breath then hold it. She went motionless everywhere, except for her eyes. Those, she kept moving, searching the darkness in front of her, hoping and yet not wanting to see anything near her hand.

She didn’t know how long she stood there before she took another breath. Twenty seconds, maybe closer to a minute. It had been a long time since she’d recorded how long she could hold it. She hadn’t thought about it since childhood, at least, when she would sit at the bottom of the family pool, close her eyes and try not to float until she couldn’t help it, until her lungs were burning.

She thought it would help train her lungs to let her take deep breaths like everyone else. She’d joked with her mother about winning the world record for the longest time without air. Nothing else touched her. The darkness stopped swirling. Melanie exhaled and let her hand drift down to her side again.

And yet, something about the corner was different. Though she couldn’t feel air currents moving anymore, there was still a curious kind of openness, like if she wanted, she could step into and through it. She could push through the shadows like a waterfall veil and come out on the other side to find herself...where?

“Nowhere,” she said out
loud, backing up abruptly. The sense of menace she hadn’t felt when this whole investigation began suddenly washed over her, chilling her to the bone. Even if she could somehow step through the wall, if the rules of logic really had abandoned her and made something insane suddenly possible, she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t go. Not alone. She was smarter than that.

She turned her back to the corner and the shadows
and went back to bed. She climbed beneath the covers and hauled them up to her chin, but she didn’t lie down or turn out the light. She sat, arms wrapped around her knees, chin pinning the blanket atop them. She watched the shadows in the corner, making sure they didn’t do anything shadows shouldn’t.

She sat and she stared until she fell asleep.

~

Leaving Melanie didn’t strike Kade as the best idea. When it came to business with the IU, though, dragging her in deeper would be even worse.

His cell phone had been vibrating for at least five minutes before he decided to stop ignoring it and see what the hell was so important. Not an emergency, Garamendi told him, but since things had quieted down after the incident and Melanie didn’t need him, he could take a few minutes and come talk to the boss.

It wasn’t so much a direct order as a pointed suggestion. Despite the fact Garamendi had all but shoved him back into duty, Kade didn’t think fighting him about this would make getting through it any easier, so he’d go.

He didn’t crack the door on Melanie’s room before he left, though he stood in the hall and listened for a while. There was silence on the other side. No reason to disturb her if she was resting peacefully. Besides, while his attention might be elsewhere during this impromptu meeting, his body would still be in the apartment. He could get back to her at the speed of thought.

The shadow-born called it fading. Scientists and shysters called it astral projection. Whatever the term, it came in handy when Kade needed to be in two places at once.

"You're in a good mood."
Sylvie Idle fell into step beside him, keeping up with Kade's long strides despite the fact he topped her by a foot. "You in a hurry to get somewhere?"

"Status report," Kade answered. "Garamendi called me in."

Sylvie snorted, not at all delicately. Then again, she'd always struck him as less the handle-with-care type and more tread with caution. Curvy and petite, people tended to underestimate the data specialist, but Sylvie could more than hold her own. "That'd explain why you look like you want to choke someone."

He smirked. "Thought you just said I was in a good mood."

"Sarcasm, Kade. Learn to love it." They walked a few more paces before she asked, "So why the face-to-face?"

Kade kept moving. "What, he didn't tell you? I'm on the job. They threw me in the deep end. Penumbra's not just after this woman, they've already tried to take her out."
The crack of the gunshot echoed through his mind again. Was it the bullet meant for Melanie or an older memory dredged up tonight? It didn’t matter. If he never heard that sound again, he’d celebrate.

Sylvie stopped walking, drawing them both up short. "Look. If he bust
s your chops, it's just because he's worried. You surprised everyone by agreeing to come back."