Shadow City (17 page)

“Just pick a place and want to go there. Try to narrow the choice,” he told her weakly.

“That’s all? So, like, just pick the kitchen, and that’s where we’ll end up?”

“Too many knives,” he said with a ghost of a smile. “Pick a soft landing.”

“Like a bed?”

Scooter nodded.

“What are you talking about?” Ilanion demanded.

“Saving our asses. Now, shut up.”

She reached out and grabbed each man’s hand. She snorted inwardly.
Men. As if.
Scooter was a god or a demigod, and Ilanion was no doubt the same. She wondered if they’d met at godlet preschool. Or maybe godlet Boy Scouts or Little League.

She pulled her mind away before she broke out into hysterical giggles and wove her fingers together with theirs.

She closed her eyes and sank into the awareness of every cell of her body. The wonder of it still amazed her. But it wasn’t enough. She pushed out, trying to sense her two companions. It was different from her sense of her clothing. That was more simple. These were whole bodies, plus clothing. She wondered what would happen if she missed parts of them. What a jigsaw mess that would be. A liver missing here, a spleen there, a couple of arms and one eye, maybe a few toes and fingers . . .

Drawing a deep breath, Max concentrated. She pushed her awareness into the men. They were nothing like her. They felt entirely alien. Still, there was a cohesion to them, a sense of themselves. She traced the edges of their bodies and went deeper, finding where their blood pulsed. She paused as she found a twisting of putrid magic where Scooter’s heart should have been. It felt swollen and hot, like a tangle of molten metal. She could feel its wrongness—it was rotten and festering, like a disease. She found the same on his head—a gaping hole filled with blinding heat and decay. It threaded through his body in a filigree of carrion and corruption. No wonder he was dying. He was rotting from the inside out.

Ilanion was different. He was filled with sunlight, and it did not burn. Gold ran through his veins and sheathed his wings. Internally, he had two hearts and a huge pair of lungs. The rest of him was enough like a human to make getting a sense of him easier. Max already felt tired. She chewed her lower lip, pushing once again to take in Ilanion’s armor and Scooter’s robe. She might as well go for broke.

She didn’t give them any warning as she dropped down into her fortress. She plummeted, holding them tight in the net of her awareness.

She’d thought that going through the first time was bad. This was infinitely worse. Now, instead of pulling herself through the eye of a needle, she was pulling all three of them. And somehow both men seemed to have swelled up. They were the size of barns.

Max felt her hold on them slipping. Not in this lifetime. She set herself, planting herself solidly inside the fortress. She concentrated, holding on to them with all her might.

Strength flowed up her legs, accompanied by the searing chill of the abyss. She grasped it and hauled as hard as she knew how. Nothing happened. She gritted her teeth and dug deeper. Every muscle strained. Capillaries popped and healed. Bones snapped and knitted back together. Muscles tore, and tendons ripped. Max didn’t let up. She’d get them through or die trying.

Stubbornness won the battle at last. The world split in half, and they plunged through her fortress into the blackness of the abyss.

She sighed with relief as pain ebbed. Scooter floated beside her in his robe. He looked terrible. Worse than the first time they’d come through the abyss. His blue-flecked obsidian eyes were dull, like scratched marbles. He was skeletal, his hair lank, the gold running through his scales and hair a tarnished gray. He nodded at her as if to say
well done
. She scowled.

On the other side of her, Ilanion didn’t look any different, except that his armor and wings gleamed with an inner light, and his eyes had once again turned to liquid gold. He was staring at her in total shock.

She gave him a cocky grin, then dove back down into her fortress, all the while thinking of Ilanion’s bed.

The first time, pulling them through had been like giving birth to a killer whale. The second time was much worse. It felt like she was being passed through a meat grinder. Or rather, like she was stuck inside it, getting chewed up over and over and over.

Still, Max held on to her companions tenaciously. If she let go, they’d be lost in the abyss.

She put all her strength into pushing back through her fortress. It seemed to take forever. Then, suddenly, they were falling. A moment later, they bounced onto a bed. Except that it was more like a cloud of feather pillows. Max sank face-first, swallowed up in a soft, cloying fist. The bed smelled of Ilanion, sex, perfume, and sweat.

She rolled onto her back and kicked her way out of the sprawling mass of comfort, bashing her head into one of Ilanion’s wings as she did.

She slid off onto the floor. The bed was set on a broad, low platform in the middle of an enormous room with a coffered ceiling, deeply piled rugs, backless couches and chairs, a fireplace that could fit a moose inside, paneled walls with brightly colored paintings, and elegant decorations. Crystal chandeliers sent prisms of light dancing through the room.

It was about all Max managed to notice before exhaustion and pain swamped her. She swayed and felt herself melting to the floor in a liquid heap. Her head spun, and she couldn’t focus on anything. Her body throbbed and flared with pain. She was broken, and she was out of fuel to heal herself.

“What’s the matter with her?” Ilanion said.

“She is new to traveling the abyss. She used all her strength.” Scooter sounded impossibly weary. “She needs healing and sustenance. Or she will die.”

Max told herself to prove him wrong.
Move! Sit up and get on with the job!
But her body refused to answer. It felt like climbing up Mount Everest just to keep her heart beating and her blood flowing. It wasn’t until that moment that she really believed she might be on the verge of dying.
Shit
.

A spurt of energy flooded her spirit. Not today. She
was not
dying today. She had too much to do, and she needed to get home and let Niko and Tyler berate her for vanishing and apologize to Alexander for being such a wimp about loving him.
Loving him? Crap.
But it was true. Apparently, imminent death had brought on a moment of clarity.

Her determination meant nothing to her body. She had used up everything. There was nothing left.

“She’s bound somewhere,” Ilanion said, and she felt one of his fingers glide across her forehead and down the bridge of her nose, as if it were following a trail of magic.

“To a witch.”

“I thought she was yours.”

“She was given to me.”

“She can’t be yours if she’s bound to a witch.”

Max could hear the disdainful curl of his lip when he said
witch
. Like he wasn’t one. She wanted to point that out, but her mouth was frozen rubber.

Her heart slowed. She felt thin—wasted and transparent. She needed calories. A lot of them, all mainlined directly into an artery. If it wasn’t too late.

She took a breath. Half a breath. Her lungs refused to expand. Her thoughts felt fuzzy, like someone was pulling apart the threads of her mind. Ilanion and Scooter sounded far away and blurry, as if they were under water. Or she was.

“Can you help her?” Scooter asked Ilanion.

“Possibly.”

“You might want to hurry. She’s fading.”

Fading
was the right word. Max didn’t feel any pain anymore. She felt like a deflated balloon. The pain eased as she lost feeling. It was like she was evaporating.

A jolt of magic flashed through her. She felt herself flop and puddle back into herself. Blackness charred the edges of her mind.

Another jolt.

Fading.

The last thing Max felt was a distant snapping. Like fishbones and icicles. Then there was release and velvet blackness.

T
HEY CAME WITHOUT STEALTH, AND THAT SAVED
their lives. Had they been hunting, he would have ripped their throats out.

He had exhausted himself. He sprawled on a shelf of stone above a small valley. Behind him, a cave wormed deep into the rock. He would have safety from the sun, if he wanted it. He could easily defend the entrance against a horde of enemies, or he could escape across the cliff face or leap to the valley floor. He would break bones, but he would heal. He had energy to burn.

He had killed things and eaten them. Blood smeared his chest, arms, and face. His shirt lay in bloody ribbons on the ground behind him. Fifty feet below, Beyul sat panting, his green eyes glowing softly as he watched him.

Alexander growled low from deep in his belly when the three Blades jogged over the opposite ridge and descended into the valley. Knowledge rose in his mind: Niko, Thor, Tyler. The names meant nothing to him, nor did the men. Before he could react to their appearance, a scent hooked his attention, and he looked up. The air whistled across metal wings. Tutresiel dropped out of the sky like an eagle.

Alexander sprang to a crouch, his body clenching tight. He bared his teeth and growled again. A warning.

The angel landed opposite. In his arms, he held a woman, dark-haired and slender. Valery. The silver wings curved forward around her, the feathers a shining fence of deadly knives. She started to pull out of his grip, but Tutresiel held her still.

“No,” he said, his red gaze fixed on Alexander. “Stay here. See his eyes? He’s gone totally feral. He’s been teetering on the edge since Max was taken. His Prime is in total control, and the man is . . . far away. Just now, he’s likely to kill you, no matter what you mean to him. I don’t think you can bring him back to sanity.”

“The hell with that,” she said, struggling.

Alexander watched her shoving at Tutresiel’s unrelenting arm, a snarling part of him wanting to leap to her aid, another part coldly curious.

She went still and focused on him. “Alexander,” she said quietly. “You have to pull yourself together and come back.”

He only stared at her, his lips curling back from his teeth in an expression of total contempt.
Never
.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Tutresiel observed. “He’s deep in the pit and still falling.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Valery snapped. She elbowed the angel with no effect at all. “Alexander. This isn’t you. Max wouldn’t like you going all Cujo. She’d want you to come back to Horngate.”

Words churned deep inside. They rose onto his tongue, ripping at his insides. They felt strange, as if he’d forgotten how to speak. “Max is dead.” The words sent a jolt of shuddering pain through his body. He curled his fingers into claws as a red film clouded his vision.

“How do you know?” Tutresiel demanded. “She’s broken witch bindings before. Have you no faith?” He shook his head, his eyes narrowing to slits. “You’re a disgusting excuse for a Shadowblade. You don’t deserve her.”

Rage roared through Alexander, and he leaped at the angel. Tutresiel dodged aside, his wings pumping powerfully as he lifted himself and Valery into the air.

“Is it a fight you want? Then come get me.”

Tutresiel dropped to the valley floor and shoved Valery toward Niko. He stood with his legs braced, his arms crossed, his wings spread as he looked up at Alexander.

Without thinking, Alexander launched himself off the stone shelf. He had hated the angel since their first meeting. He landed and lunged at Tutresiel. The angel folded his wings, a deadly smile spreading across his beautiful face. Alexander had fought Tutresiel twice before and knew what he was capable of. The angel could not be killed, but he could be made to hurt. Alexander meant to make him scream.

He charged like a bull. Tutresiel set himself, his smile turning arrogant.
Cocky bastard
. But Alexander was not stupid. Just before he would have crashed against the angel, he swerved. The angel stepped aside to dodge his rush, and Alexander drove his shoulder into his stomach. Tutresiel toppled back, caught in midstride.

Alexander’s momentum made him sprawl past. Instantly, he was on his feet, but Tutresiel was, too. They circled each other.

“Alexander, stop this! You have to think!” Valery shouted. “He’ll kill you. He’s an
angel
.”

He ignored her, his attention entirely focused on Tutresiel.

Thor’s voice joined Valery’s. “Son, you’ve got a Fury rising at Horngate. This ain’t a time to let your brain go to mush.” His slow drawl was tense.

“Max wouldn’t want this,” Tyler said, his voice thick with grief.

Suddenly, something struck Alexander from behind. He dropped to a knee as debilitating pain exploded in his gut. Niko kicked his leg out from under him and booted him in the chest—once, twice, three times. Bones cracked loudly. Alexander coughed, blood spraying from his lips.

Niko straddled Alexander, pinning the fallen man’s arms under his knees, and jabbed a knife into his throat. A warm stream of blood ran down Alexander’s neck. “Hold still, you motherfucker,” Niko ordered between gritted teeth. “None of that telekinesis shit you use, either. I’ll cut your head off before you can kill me. Be sure of it.