Shadow Kin (39 page)

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Authors: M.J. Scott

BOOK: Shadow Kin
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And I’d learned one other thing. He could never learn the truth about me. Or anything he’d ever felt for me would disappear faster than a blown candle. And now I cared what he thought. Not just because I wanted his cure or wanted his protection. Because of him.
The thought of him knowing what I was burned like acid in my throat, a painful fear I couldn’t swallow away. It even swamped the need, dulling its roar.
When I finally rose from my bed, to wash and change out of the clothes I’d fought in, I knew what I had to do. Get back to Atherton. See if he could think of anything else to try to conquer the need. Anything to keep Simon from knowing.
Simon answered my knock, which eased my fear a little. I thought that he might not be ready to speak to me. Nor was I sure how to convince Simon to take me back. What excuse did I have, after all? Simon wanted to keep the ward and Atherton a secret, so he was hardly going to take me there without a good reason.
Simon sat on his bed, back against the rough stone wall, a book lying facedown on the blanket beside him. He looked up as I entered but made no move toward me. Nor did he indicate that I should join him. I stayed near the door, hesitating.
“Did you want something?” Simon asked.
His voice was polite, his eyes distant. Angry. That much I could decipher. But unlike the males in the Blood Court, keeping his anger tightly leashed. I hoped that Atherton had some alternatives for me to try, because I didn’t think Simon would be joining me in bed again anytime soon. “I think I should start looking for the informant,” I said, coming straight to the point. The truth seemed safest for now. “I should go back to St. Giles.”
“Right now?” He sounded tired and I wondered what he’d been doing in the hours that had passed. Working at St. Giles? Pushing himself hard as usual.
“There’s nothing else pressing for me to do, is there? I can’t just sit around here while I wait to talk to the Fae. I need to do something. If we can find out whether or not Lucius knows about what you’re doing down there, then we may learn something about whatever it is that he’s plotting.” We might even work out whether it was me or Simon he was after. If it were only me, then that might make any choices I had to make down the line easier.
My words seemed to get his attention. He straightened on the bed, gaze sharpening. “Father Cho would want you to be escorted.”
“You could take me, couldn’t you?” Surely once we got there and Simon was distracted by his patients, there would be a chance for Atherton and me to talk.
For a moment I thought he would refuse. But then he rose. “All right. We need to tell Bryony anyway. The ward’s the best place for that.”
Simon took the lead as we headed back to the tunnels. We didn’t pass any Templars in the tunnel from the Brother House, and when we passed through the gate, Simon dealt with the possibility of anyone seeing us by pulling a charm from his pocket.
“Can you shadow here?” he asked, twining the leather thong that held the charm through his fingers.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He nodded once, then disappeared from view.
I blinked. An invisibility charm. That took strong magic, but magic was hardly in short supply around St. Giles.
“Come on,” Simon’s voice came from thin air.
I shadowed, then followed the soft sound of his footsteps through the tunnels. Once we were through the first of the doors, he disabled the charm. I followed his lead and stepped out of the shadow.
 
“What are you doing here?” Atherton asked as we greeted him. He stopped whatever it was he was doing with the racks of glass tubes spread before him on his desk.
Simon joined him. “I’ve sent Bryony a message, asking her to meet us here. She needs to know about Lily’s theory. Is everything all right here?”
I hoped Atherton would say something that would make Simon go into the ward itself, but no such luck.
“Everything is normal,” Atherton said. His head swiveled toward me. “What’s happening outside?”
“So far, so good,” Simon said. He reached out and lifted one of the racks, studying the pale liquid in the tubes. I resigned myself to biding my time as they started to talk medical things I didn’t understand. My chance would come.
Or maybe not, I thought as the outer door swung open and Bryony joined us.
“My apologies,” she said. “I was in a consultation.” She looked at Simon, not at me. “What’s so important that I had to sneak down here during daylight?”
“Lily has a theory,” said Simon. “One you’re not going to like.”
He filled Bryony in quickly, starting at the very beginning. She stayed silent until he came to the part about someone selling them out to Lucius.
“There is no informant!” She spoke indignantly, ring glinting as she gestured to emphasize her point. “Our staff are trustworthy.”
I resisted the desire to roll my eyes. Of course, none of Bryony’s perfect Fae would ever do anything untoward. “Can you think of another reason why Lucius would try to kill Simon? Have there been any other attempts on other sunmages?”
Bryony did her own more elegant version of a head toss. “Who knows why Lucius does anything? There could well be other reasons.”
Simon looked like he wanted both of us to grow up. “If there’s even a possibility, we can’t ignore it,” he said. “It puts too much at risk.”
“You think she’s right? She knows nothing about St. Giles,” Bryony said.
“She knows a lot about Lucius, though,” Simon shot back.
His defense of me brought a bubble of relief. My stomach eased for the first time in hours. “Obviously it was a mistake to think you would see reason about this,” I said as Bryony opened her mouth to argue. “Simon, I’m sure we’ll manage without her.”
“Why, you—” Bryony broke off, her expression shocked. “We have to go,” she said, and whirled toward the door.
Chapter Seventeen
 
 
Simon and I followed, hastening our steps as Bryony broke into a run.
“What is it?” I asked as we sprinted through the tunnels and up the stairs.
Simon didn’t slow. “Someone triggered the alarm wards.”
Some sort of emergency? What? The first thing that sprang to mind was an attack.
Lucius
. Lords of hell, he was never going to leave me alone.
Bryony didn’t even look to see if we were following as we reached the domed entrance hall of the hospital. A group of healers, both Fae and human, were clustered near the front door. I spotted Harriet and the Fae healer—Chrysanthe, that was it—amongst them. One of the men stepped forward as Bryony came to an elegant stop. Simon and I skidded to a less coordinated halt behind her.
“What’s happening?” Bryony demanded.
The man pointed toward the front lawn. “Out there.”
The three of us turned in unison, looking out through the glass-paneled doors.
“Gods and fucking suns,” Simon muttered.
As curses went, it hardly seemed bad enough. Beyond the doors, beyond the marble tiles that marked the boundaries of the Haven, stood a line of Beasts in hybrid form. Thirty or more of them. Their choice of form was a clever disguise, but that wasn’t the problem here. No, the problem was the fact that they each carried a burden in their arms.
A still form of a human.
Too still. The bodies—that seemed the right word—appeared too limp even for blood-locked. I couldn’t see any movement at all, though that might be the slightly wavering view through the thickened glass door.
I stepped closer, fury spiking through me, warring with the fear that made my mouth taste like ash.
“Lily, stay back,” Simon barked.
“No.”
I shook him off, pulled open the door, and strode out onto the marble stairs.
To my surprise, Bryony came with me. And it was she who spoke first, addressing the Beasts.
“What do you want?”
“The soulless one.” The growling words came from the tallest of the Beasts, the one who stood at the center of the line. His fur was a dark ominous brown, almost black. A Rousselline if I had to guess, though other packs shared those darker tones.
“She is protected under the laws of Haven,” Bryony said firmly. Despite her words, I had the feeling she wished she could just hand me over.
“Then, I must deliver you a message from Lucius.”
Bryony’s hands tightened in her skirts, but her voice stayed steady. “What is it?”
“He wishes you to know that
he
returns what belongs to others.” The Beast gave a snarling laugh, then tossed the body in his arms toward us. It fell with a nasty cracking thud just before the edge of the marble. The sound of bones breaking. It—no, he, now that I could see the face—lay still, limbs slack and unmoving, distorted into awkward angles from the fall.
Definitely dead. Ashes turned to acid as nausea swept through me. I locked my knees reflexively, groping for control. No reaction. I could do this. I was accustomed to witnessing Lucius’ atrocities.
Beside me, Bryony made a choking noise and I heard Simon give an order in a harsh tone, but I couldn’t make out exactly what he said through the roar of my pulse in my ears.
I stepped forward, but Bryony’s hand closed like granite around my wrist. “Stay where you are.”
The Beast looked at me and gestured, his hand cutting through the air like the strike of a sword.
The other Beasts, as one, repeated what he had done. A rain of bodies landed on the grassy verge, each dull impact reverberating through me like a thunderclap.
Dead.
All dead.
So
many
.
My fault.
“Lucius reminds you that there are plenty more where these came from,” said the Beast. “He will keep returning what is yours until what is his returns to him.”
My stomach rolled and I set my teeth so I wouldn’t vomit. So many dead. Even the blood-locked didn’t deserve this. Death at a whim. Death to prove a point.
Lucius wasn’t going to stop, I realized. He would keep coming for me. People would keep dying. Because of me. More families would face loss and pain as Simon’s had. Simon himself would be hurt by this, would blame himself.
So much pain. I wasn’t worth it.
I had to go back.
I took a step forward, breaking Bryony’s grip. Simon reached for me. Caught me, his fingers iron around my arm. “What are you doing?” he said fiercely.
“I have to go back,” I said.
“Give us the wraith,” the Beast called across the marble.
“Leave this place.” Bryony’s voice rolled and boomed. Fae magic charged the air, making it crackle.
The Beast stepped back, swept a mocking bow. “I remind you, Lady, that we have violated no laws.”
I realized, with a sickening rush, that it was true. They had committed no violence on Haven grounds. And if all the dead were blood-locked, then these deaths were not a crime. The locked were presumed, under the terms of the treaties, to have forfeited their rights of protection. Killing one wasn’t murder. More the natural order of things. Though why the humans had ever agreed to such a thing when the treaties were first struck was beyond me. They must have been truly desperate to survive, to stop the war and the killings
As I was now. “I have to go back,” I repeated.
“No!” Simon said.
I tried to break his grip but he was too strong. “Let me go.”
“No.” Before I could respond he picked me up bodily and carried me back into the hospital and into the nearest room. The door crashed shut with a bang as he kicked it closed.
I punched his back. “Put me down.”
He did so but he didn’t let go of my arm. My wrist ached from the force of his grip.
“Have you lost your mind?” he bellowed.
“No,” I yelled back. “I’ve just come to my senses. This isn’t going to work, Simon. Lucius isn’t going to stop. He’s going to keep coming. Doing worse and worse things.”

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