Shadowman (11 page)

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Authors: Erin Kellison

BOOK: Shadowman
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“
Me?
” This from the guy with lead in his veins. Who were these people?
“Adam says you were sneaking around the grounds a few days ago. Well, you got what you wanted. You're within Segue now, God help you. Made it all the way to the kitchen, which means there's no going back.” He chuckled. “Least not after tasting Marcie's food.”
Marcie smiled over her shoulder at him as she plated the pasta and set it before Layla. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Marcie said with a grin. “What kind of work will you be doing here, Layla?”
Layla noticed the amused arc of Custo's brow. “Yes, Ms. Mathews, how will you be earning your keep?”
He's putting me on the spot on purpose. He knows why I'm here; he just wants me to admit it out loud so Marcie understands, too. Well, it's best to be up front about everything.
“I'm working on a feature story about Segue and the origins of the wraiths, and frankly, it might make trouble for some here. But I'm happy to pitch in with whatever needs doing.” She gave a game smile and added brightness to her voice. “I call dishes.”
Layla waited for warm Marcie to turn cold, but instead she winked at her while handing Custo his plate. “She'll do dishes? I like her already.”
“Yes, it's always best to be up front,” he said. “I'm glad we agree on that point.”
Layla froze, fork midway to her mouth.
Did I say that bit aloud?
“Nope.” He took a huge bite.
Layla carefully put her fork down.
He read my mind.
Mouth full, Custo gave her half a grin and a howdy-do nod, confirming her suspicion. Marcie had gone quiet, stealing a quick glance at them both, then put dishes in the sink. Her sudden retreat set the butterflies flying in Layla's belly.
Custo looks weird and he can read my mind.
“I can't help the way I look,” he grumbled and shoved another bite in his mouth. He chewed casually, at home, without care. As if this wasn't a huge deal.
Layla slid off her stool and backed away from Custo, who went on eating. First Khan, the sudden pain from the gate, then the ghost, now this. She put her hands on her skull to smother her thoughts. Any thoughts at all, but still they came.
So invasive, but don't overreact. He looks weird, yes he does, weird. These people are freaks of nature. I can't help my thoughts, and anyway it isn't how he looks that bugs me. It's the mind-reading thing. No privacy. I have a right to think what I want. Feel what I want. It's what a person does that's important.
“I hate it myself, and my wife has banned me completely from her brain. I keep telling her that there are times when it could be useful”—he waggled his eyebrows—“but she won't budge.”
“Can I ban you from my brain, too?”
He wiped his mouth on his napkin. “Sure. I found out what I needed to know anyway.”
What? What did he find out? What terrible thing has he learned about me?
He strode to the dishwasher with his empty plate and placed it sideways in the rack. Dropped his fork and knife in the silverware caddy, too. “That it's best to be up front and that what a person does is most important.”
Oh. Okay. That didn't make her sound so bad. But just because he had the ability to read her thoughts didn't mean he had the right. How could Marcie stand it? Layla knew she herself couldn't. With so much power at Segue's disposal, how could they ever have thought she'd be a threat to them? The mind reading alone ensured that she couldn't act against their wishes without their knowing.
He stopped at the doorway. “You've got one thing wrong, though, and it's bound to become a huge problem for you. Considering the players involved, it might even cost lives. Or worse, souls.”
What the heck was he talking about? She had neither magic, like Khan, nor extraordinary ability, like Custo.
Custo's gaze darkened. “You're at the boundary of Shadow now. Segue straddles it more than it ever has, even as Adam strives to hold the darkness back. What you think and what you feel here are just as important as what you do. Maybe more.
Temet Nosce.
”
“What does that mean?”
“It's the best advice I can give you, and, sister, you need it.
Know thyself.
”
Now she was angry. “I do. I'm Layla Mathews. I know who I am.” Where did he get off suggesting otherwise?
“Oh, okay,” he conceded easily. He turned to leave, pushing open the swinging door and tossing over his shoulder, “Then you know you're one of the weird ones, too.”
Chapter 7
Once in Twilight, Khan trembled as Shadow dissolved the mortal body he'd worked so hard to hold. He strained to retain a semblance of Kathleen's Shadowman but was too weak to stop the cyclone of his dissolution. The cold, wild tendrils claimed him again, and he became the Reaper, a Shadow-fae consciousness wrapped in darkness. Instantly, the keening of his scythe filled him, the curved blade a hated extension of himself, paining him like a ghost limb.
“So lift the blade again,” a soft voice said.
Moira. He didn't look upon the lie of her lovely face. The long fall of gold hair, the youth shining from her sunny skin, eyes that matched the earth's blue sky. Of her three faces, this countenance promised life and health, but her nature was age old and rotten with it. Fate.
She'd cut Layla's lifeline from the fabric of humanity, and he'd stood by and watched her do it. Moira was the inevitable.
“All mortals must die,” she crooned. “Even your woman. Only the blade is eternal.”
His scythe,
his
fate. A legacy of death.
No. To take up his blade again would sever him forever from Kathleen. He'd take what little time he had with her, with Layla. Moira had already done her worst.
He was here only to reclaim his strength so that he could hunt the creature that Layla had released. He knew the burden of letting loose something evil into the world. He would not have her bear it. And then he would deal with the gate.
A moment here and already he was growing stronger. Shadow may have destroyed the illusion of his mortal body, but it also fed him. He could feel the contrary stuff snapping within, his power redoubling, his darkness deepening.
“The human form Kathleen made for you is lost.” Moira laughed. “What will Layla make of you? How will she see Death?”
Only Kathleen had ever made him beautiful, and it had taken every iota of strength to hold that body in Layla's presence. Without Kathleen, he was hollow. The next time he saw Layla, she would alter his appearance according to how
she
perceived Death. At least he'd seen her to safety first.
“You said it yourself: she will reject you, because it is human nature to do so. Life cannot make peace with death. Between the two is Shadow. Bide . . . you . . .
here
.”
Moira drew her shimmering skirts aside. Beneath crawled the blinded, ravaged soul of a human woman. Her eyes were sunken, and her hair was balding, long strands still clutched in her own hands from when she'd pulled them from her scalp. She'd died, but because he'd abandoned his post, there was no one to see her safely across to the Hereafter, as was his duty.
“Like so many others, she got lost in the trees,” Moira said. “The angels try, but they have not found this one yet. I keep her hidden; it's so much fun to watch them search.” Moira clucked with her tongue, and the mortal looked around in terror. The woman's spirit was dim, flickering with exhaustion. She was losing herself to whatever illusion Moira had trapped her in.
Pity flared within Khan. “Set her free.”
Moira's eyes twinkled. “Set her free yourself.”
“I cannot. I will not.”
“It is your nature, Stormcrow,” she said. He had as many names as he had faces. He preferred the one that Kathleen had chosen: Shadowman. Moira shook her head. “And nature always prevails.”
Khan smiled to match the sharp flash of her gaze. There was no going back, not now, not ever. The world was different . . . and so was he. But Moira had been trapped in darkness age upon age. She couldn't possibly understand, but he tried anyway. “
I want to change.
”
Moira laughed. “But you are
fae
.”
Fae, yes. But not the same as he had been. Kathleen had worked that miracle, and he would not, could not, give it up. To prove it, he lifted a hand and banished the illusion from the woman's mind. He would not help her cross, but he would not leave her trapped, her soul to burn out, either. The kneeling woman froze, double blinked. Blinked again. Slowly her gaze lifted from the root-gripped earth to him.
He'd known it would happen. Could almost sense the order of her mind asserting itself. The perfumed air of Twilight changed its humor, took on a familiar stench. Likewise, his shadows stirred as the woman reformed him to match her mental image. Shadow pulsed, then condensed into a settling roil. Then went still.
And the woman screamed.
The ultimate monster now stood before her: Him. Death. The Grim Reaper.
Moira's laughter rose. “You are as you have always been.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. What horror had his form taken? Would Layla see a monster as well? Would she scream? “But I don't choose it.”
The words had scarcely left his tongue when he sensed the earth shiver, a great trembling as if it sought to cast off something unclean. The devil.
Khan sent fingers of darkness skimming along the veil. Mortal life sizzled on the other side with flashes of emotion, innumerable voices raised in conversation, layering into a great clamor of humanity. Everywhere soul-lights flickered, some approaching for a cross, though he would not be the one to shepherd them. The angels had better look sharp.
There!
A sticky suck of blood, the smear left behind by the devil.
Khan gathered great wings of Shadow to him.
Moira laughed, “Fly, Stormcrow!”
And he did. He had a devil to catch.
He crossed the boundary between the worlds, broke through the atmosphere, and found himself down the street from the warehouse where the gate was created, near the river. An unholy stain marred a spot on the street where the devil had taken its first victim. The kill was not palpable to human senses. The spilled blood had been washed from the street and the smell of fear had dispersed into the wind. Yet the sense of evil remained. Passersby would shudder. Neither animal nor insect would draw near. But the devil was long gone.
Khan cast his Shadow out again. And
there
, again, the creature had taken lives. The devil had headed south, into a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.
This blot on the world, marked off by yellow tape, was situated near racks of clothing within a large store. Again, the signs of violence had been cleaned, but the sense of evil could never be completely erased. This store would fail. The building would go derelict.
Khan reached again. Where and how far could the devil go in the short space of a single day? He sought the stain of another wrongful death and found it along a highway. Through Shadow he gathered himself to that spot.
The body was still there. The spirit had crossed.
Khan crouched low to examine the corpse. It had been a quick kill, more to incapacitate than to murder. Across the gut were four long, bloody gouges, like the swipe of a bear claw. The red stuff congealed across the belly. The ground beneath was stained red. A vehicle was parked askew, off the road. It was incongruous with its owner—the metal rusted and dinged, while the body of the man had the sheen of wealth. If Khan had to guess, the devil had preferred this man's car and had stolen it from him.
But to go where?
Mountains rose in the far distance. A green sign just up the way read,
WEST VIRGINIA TURNPIKE
. And then Khan knew. Of course. Where else would it be headed? To whom would it be irresistibly drawn?
Segue. And Layla, who'd set it free.
 
 
Layla sat on the bed, the blankets still drawn but now covered with chicken-scratch notes she'd jotted on a pad of Post-its she'd found in the bedside drawer. The sleek digital clock next to the bed said it was 1:12 a.m., but there was no way she could sleep. The ghost girl had made sleeping ever again unlikely, and Custo's cryptic warning had settled it.
She was in over her head. Khan had promised her answers, but with the depth of mystery that existed within Segue, answers could easily become a life's work.
But she couldn't go back. How could she live with the knowledge that the bump in the night might just be real? That what she saw might be real? She'd be scared every minute. Going back to her apartment, marrying Ty, and having kids with all this in the back of her mind was impossible. She couldn't even imagine that life now.
She needed to be here. The place, the people, even the magic . . . she'd never be able to shake them. Where she fit in the scheme of things was now the driving question.
The scattered Post-its noted each probable “fact” she'd accumulated. There was no order to her system, and she liked it that way. The happenstance disorganization of her notes allowed her to make unexpected connections that neat lines and categories would not allow. Right now, “mean girl ghost” overlapped with “superhot Khan.” Why did the ghost hate him so much? And north of that, “Talia,” whom Khan had said killed the wraiths' maker. But hadn't he also said back at the warehouse that
he
and he alone was responsible for the wraith disease? Didn't make sense. She rearranged the notes. Put “Khan” next to “Custo.” Now there was a combo. Would Custo be able to read Khan's mind? Something told her Custo had better not try.
A soft knocking sound had Layla crumpling the note in her hand, her heart leaping. She held her breath. She didn't think she could take any more today.
The knock sounded again. Still soft. Tentative.
Someone was at the door. A ghost wouldn't bother to knock, a wraith would bust in, and Khan would simply step out of the shadows.
Layla glanced at the clock. 1:23 a.m. The strange place obviously kept strange hours. She crawled off the bed, scattering notes on the floor, and tiptoed to the small living room of her Segue suite. All quiet. The one-bedroom apartment was lovely—fireplace, flat-screen TV, comfy couches in warm, welcoming tones. It had every possible comfort except peace of mind.
She approached the door and put an eye to the peephole. The warped figure of a woman, white blond hair in a loose ponytail, was moving away down the hall.
Talia.
Had to be.
Layla jerked open the door.
Talia turned. She was midway down the long corridor to the elevator. “I'm so sorry if I woke you.”
Her voice was like her knock: soft, tentative, kind. Layla shook her head to say,
No, I was still awake
, but the words themselves were caught in an incredible tightening of her throat. The late-night hush of the hall roared in her ears. Her sight wavered with the vertigo of an out-of-body dream.
Talia.
“I saw your light and thought maybe . . .”
All Layla could do was nod.
Yes, any time. I've wanted to talk to you for so long.
Talia approached, a nervous half smile winking in her eyes. Khan's eyes.
Seems like forever. Where have you been? I've been looking for you.
Layla's mind reeled. Talia blurred in her vision and Layla fought to swallow an unreasonable sob.
“I'm Talia Thorne. Mind if I come in?” Talia's tone had a note of apology. “The days get so crazy around here that we might not have a moment alone tomorrow.”
Layla swiped at her tears, snuffling, and trying to laugh at herself. “Don't know what's come over me.” She held the door wide. “Please, come in.” Talia was so pretty. So very pretty. Her eyes—they were more exquisite than she had ever imagined. And she was here. Right now. Layla gestured to the kitchenette. “Can I get you anything?”
Talia's smile grew. “I'm good, thanks. And I only have a minute. The babies are restless tonight. I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself. Couldn't wait until morning.”
All the questions Layla had stored in her mind about the wraiths and Segue and Thorne Industries became jumbled in her spinning head. This was the interview of her life, and all she wanted to do was cry. And hug a strange woman. And cry some more. What was the matter with her?
“I hear you've had a big day. Why don't
you
sit down?” Talia made a show of glancing around. “Every light's on in the place, so I expect you're as terrified as I was my first night here.”
Layla lowered herself onto the red sofa that faced the small fireplace. “Scared out of my mind.”
Talia laughed. “You'll get used to it. The east wing isn't haunted, so you should be able to rest easy here. West wing, on the other hand . . . well, it stays quiet when I'm around. Ghosts don't like me much.”
“The little girl ghost doesn't like me much either.”
“Then we already have something in common. Why don't we find out what else?” Talia took a seat next to her, her brow furrowed, then leaned over to pull something from Layla's pant leg. She lifted a Post-it. “What is Custo?” she read.
Layla held her breath. She didn't want her story to break the moment. Her story didn't matter at all. This was what was important; she knew that now. Not some stupid story. Talia.

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