Shadow Kin (27 page)
Authors: M.J. Scott
I let the silence speak to me for another few breaths, then started down the dark tunnel. I see perfectly well in darkness but I still moved slowly, trying to sense ahead of me. The iron smell grew stronger the farther I went. Harsh earthy metal. A large quantity of it.
After fifty or sixty feet, I found the source of the smell. A metal door barred the path. I couldn’t tell if it was solid iron, or merely ironclad. The door spanned the width of the tunnel as well as its height. A lot of precious metal to use on a door. A heavy lock, made of some lighter metal, sparkled faintly in the darkness. Warded, then.
I considered my options: move through the warded door, which was usually perfectly safe, or go around it through the earth and brick surrounding the tunnel. I erred on the side of caution, even though I dislike moving through solid substances for extended periods of time.
Sliding through dirt or rock feels like something being dragged through your insides somehow. The weight presses on you until you feel you can’t breathe. Which is ridiculous because as far as I’ve been able to determine, I don’t actually need to breathe when I’m shadowed.
This wasn’t too bad, though. I moved sideways a few feet, then forward, then sideways again once I’d cleared the door. I stepped into another short passage. Darkened again. There were lamps on the walls but they were unlit. I suspected they were oil rather than gas. Gas leaks underground could be deadly.
The passage ended in yet another locked and warded iron door. Secrets indeed. Secrets worth guarding at a very high price. So much iron was worth a small fortune. The amounts of iron and silver allowed to the humans under the treaties were highly regulated. Iron was ridiculously expensive and silver hardly cheaper.
As far as I knew, the humans reserved the vast majority of their allotted iron for weapons and mechanical things. Not doors and locks. Those were generally fashioned from lesser metals and fortified by a metalmage when needed. The humans didn’t have the same range of magically altered metals as the Fae—who had, after all, more power and centuries-longer lives to perfect their arts—but they did well enough. But no one had yet invented alloys that performed as well as iron and silver for certain tasks. Including deterring Fae, Beasts, and Blood.
Like the first door, the lock of the second sparkled with wardlight. I repeated my trip through the wall and beyond it. The room beyond was not completely dark. A few thick candles burned in wall sconces, shedding a small amount of light.
Enough perhaps for a human to see a little.
Across the room a figure sat, bent over a desk situated a little way from yet another warded door. For a moment I thought he was an older human from the neat white tail of hair clubbed at his neck, but then the candles flickered as air moved and I caught his scent. A scent that made the need flare like the candles.
Vampire
, I thought stupidly.
, I thought stupidly.
Surprise almost made me lose the shadow and I tightened my control as the figure turned in his chair.
What was one of the Blood doing—
His face came into the light and I bit back a gasp. Where his eyes should have been were knots of horribly scarred flesh.
Someone had put out his eyes.
I’d never seen such a thing. The Blood are hard to kill, quick to heal. To scar a Blood permanently took many applications of silver and fire and a twisted sense of revenge. Humans hadn’t done this, I realized. Humans wouldn’t waste time torturing one of the Blood; they’d just kill him.
No, this was the work of the Night World.
I swallowed. Hard.
The scars extended down his cheeks, twisting the lines of his face. The damage gave the illusion that he wore a half mask of thickened red and white leather, the darkness of the gaps where his eyes weren’t mimicking the eyeholes of a mask eerily.
“Is someone here?” he said, his face turning from side to side as if to search the room.
This time I did gasp. I knew the voice. It belonged to someone I thought dead long ago.
I let go of the shadow, though I took firm hold of my dagger as I did so. “Atherton? Atherton Carstairs?” I said softly, staying where I was.
The vampire froze, then slowly his head moved again, stilling, with eerie precision, when he faced me. “Who is there?”
I didn’t fool myself that he wasn’t processing information about me. The Blood have supernatural senses. Hearing and smell far sharper than humans, or indeed, most of the Fae. Even blind, he could tell a lot about me.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked.
He moved fast then, too fast, in the way of the Blood. A sword materialized in his hand and I didn’t doubt he could use it, blind or not. “Wraith,” he said, voice rumbling with hate. “Has Lucius finally sent you to finish me off, then?”
I readied myself to shadow if necessary. “Put the sword down, Atherton.”
The sword didn’t move an inch. “And make it easier for you to do his dirty work? I think not. If you wish to kill me, then you’ll have to work for it.”
“If I wished to kill you, I could have done it already,” I pointed out.
“He wouldn’t want it to be that easy.”
Probably true, knowing Lucius. But if I didn’t want to be attacked by a furious blind vampire any minute now, I had to convince him I was friendly. “Lucius doesn’t know I’m here.” I said. “Lucius doesn’t know where I am at all.”
His face moved in what would be a frown if his skin could still move in normal ways. “Don’t lie to me, shadow.”
“Atherton,” I said, trying not to let the loathing in his voice get to me. “It’s me. You used to talk to me sometimes. I’m not here to kill you. I give you my word. Listen.” I threw my stilettos, then the dagger onto the floor, the metal chiming against the tiled floor each time. “There, I’m unarmed.” It wasn’t that great a risk. I was fairly sure I could shadow before he could reach me with the sword.
“You could have other weapons.”
“I could but if I did and I was here to kill you, then, as I said before, you’d already be dead. Lucius enjoys toying with his victims. I don’t.” I studied his ruined face, remembering how he used to look with a sense of growing horror. He’d been young when he’d been turned, and the slim lines of his face had suited the icy pallor of the Blood well. His eyes had been blue. Bright blue like Simon’s.
I swallowed again, against a rising tide of nausea, that killed any lingering hints of the need. I wanted him to believe me. Yes, I could return to the shadow and move beyond him, but he would surely raise the alarm if I did so. I needed him to trust me. And I needed to know how he’d come to be living down here in the depths of St. Giles. “Atherton, what did he do to you?”
There was no doubt as to who “he” was. Only Lucius would do something like this.
“I would think it clear enough?” Atherton gestured toward his face.
“But why?”
He made a short harsh sound that might have been a laugh. “Isn’t that obvious?”
Not really. Lucius liked to rule by fear and sometimes there was no reason behind his rampages. But I couldn’t help wondering if Atherton’s downfall had something to do with me. Because of Louisa? Atherton had never approached me directly, though he hadn’t ignored me like most of the Court. He was young in Blood terms, not yet fifty.
When he’d vanished from Court, it had taken me awhile to realize what had happened. The Blood move between favored Court haunts and not all of them attended Lucius at all times. Those who are still building their own power bases, and must hunt for Trusted and food sources as well as playing politics, move around frequently.
After several months had passed without seeing him or Louisa, I had assumed they were dead.
I hadn’t wanted to think too hard about how he might have offended Lucius, and even if I had, there was no one I could have asked. Either Atherton and his Trusted had been quietly done away with or, more likely, horribly done away with in one of those Blood-only sessions I was never privy to.
The ones that left the Court smelling of fear for weeks.
“You crossed Lucius,” I said slowly, nausea rising again. Crossed Lucius as I was doing.
“I got played as a piece in Court politics,” he said. “A sacrificial pawn.”
“But you lived.” Blinded, scarred, but he was alive.
“Yes. If you call this living. But it’s fitting in a way. I was blind to what was really happening. Blind and arrogant.”
What did he mean? Did he know something about what Lucius was up to? Surely not? Wouldn’t he have told the humans—who obviously had given him shelter—by now? Basic gratitude would seem to warrant such information. “Someone helped you escape?”
“Yes.” Again that twisting of features, his mouth turning in what I thought was pain. “My Trusted found where Lucius was keeping me and set me free. We were pursued and she . . . she died. I got away.”
Regret flowed through his words. One of the Blood, sorry for the loss of a human. My world kept growing stranger. “How did you end up here?”
“I avoided my pursuers most of the night,” he said slowly.
That could be done, if luck was on his side, I supposed. Vampires didn’t shadow, but they could wrap themselves in darkness and become invisible for all intents and purposes, even to other vampires. I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see. “And then?”
“I couldn’t move fast. Not being able to see, it . . . it slowed me down.”
That had to be an understatement. The Blood feel pain. So he’d made his way through the dark with his face half burned off, unable to see, having to rely on his other senses and hide himself at the same time. Terrifying. My spine chilled at the very idea.
“I wanted to seek Haven. And wanted to be out of the Night World boroughs. But by the time I got near to St. Giles, it was almost dawn and I was weak. I heard someone coming from the direction of the hospital, and I decided I could either risk asking for help or likely die from sunlight or Lucius’ people finding me once dawn came. I asked for help. It was—”
“Simon,” I breathed. I couldn’t think of anyone else likely to help a wounded Blood reach a Haven rather than treat him only if he reached safety himself. “It was Simon DuCaine, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, how did you know that?” His voice was puzzled.
In his place I would be confused too, but I ignored the question. “That explains how you got to the hospital. It doesn’t explain how you came to be hidden away down here. Or what else is hidden down here with you.” I looked past him to the final door. Something else lay behind that door. And if a blind vampire hidden away was only part of Simon’s secret, then I had no idea what it might be.
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know if I can trust you.”
“I haven’t tried to kill you yet.”
I moved closer to him, my steps deliberately heavy, to ensure that he heard. It was hard. A lifetime’s habit of not putting myself within arm’s length of the Blood when I didn’t have to is difficult to break.
“Three nights ago, Lucius sent me to kill Simon,” I said slowly. “I didn’t succeed. Last night, Simon took me from Halcyon during a Beast riot. I’m fairly sure Lucius now wants me dead. I have nothing to gain by going to him.”
There was silence in the room. I could hear Atherton’s heart beating, the slow, steady rhythm of the Blood that wouldn’t be enough to sustain a human life. A familiar background sound to my life. One I’d really hoped not to hear again.
“I would like to believe you,” he said finally.
“What’s stopping you from doing just that?”
His nostrils flared a little. “I am blind but I am not otherwise disabled. I can smell you perfectly clearly. Which means, shadow, that I can also smell the taint of Lucius in you.”
Chapter Twelve
I thought for a moment that I’d accidentally shadowed and sunk through the floor. The room pressed in on me, suddenly airless. Of all the things he could have said, I hadn’t expected
that
. It took an effort to make my mouth work. “You can smell . . . what?”
that
. It took an effort to make my mouth work. “You can smell . . . what?”
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