Shadows and Light (6 page)

A decent mixture of contempt, deliberate crudeness and pressure, Rafael thought as he witnessed from afar the reaction his present garnered. Every High One was beholden to the council’s will, and the council itself wasn’t immune to pressure from their human servants. That burden was certainly there now. The victim had been their spokesperson, their pride, the one of them whom they had safely assumed would be given the First Draught and inducted into the High Ones’ august company. The killing was an embarrassment for the council—that they should be reduced to worrying about what their slaves thought of them, and that they had been put into that position in the first place by the dawdling of one of their own. Xian would come fast now. He would have to. He had said it himself—to be a member of that society, you had to abide by their rules.

Rafael headed into the dead zone. He didn’t bother to make his trail obvious. Xian would find him no matter where or how he went along his way. He had water, a little food and a large assortment of weapons. He didn’t intend to close with his former master if he could at all help it, but he did intend to be prepared.

He reached his perch a few hours after noon. Xian wouldn’t be able to come into the Lower City until nightfall—it had none of the safety measures against sun exposure that the Upper City did. Direct sunlight was one of the few things that a High One needed to avoid, and even the shadows weren’t proof against damage. Strange that the First Draught should give them so many abilities, yet take away even the most basic inheritance of man, the freedom to move about in the sun. Their skin couldn’t take it, it crackled and shrunk as the magic within them pulled back, searing layer after layer of flesh as it burrowed deeper and deeper. It was one of the reasons they kept regular humans around, to run their errands and mind their affairs in the larger world when the sun ruled the skies. Night-time was their balm, twilight their hour of ascendance, and Rafael had to be ready for it.

He lay on his back and unstoppered a small vial. Very carefully he tilted it and let two drops of tincture of belladonna fall into his eyes. The stinging was immediate and he shut them and kept them shut. The belladonna would improve his night vision, forcibly enlarging his pupils, but it made the hazy afternoon light filtering through the dust painful. He lay there, calming his mind and his body and extending his senses until he could hear the wood slowly rotting in a beam twenty feet away. Now to wait. Wait for nightfall. Perhaps an hour after twilight, Xian would be here. He would see him again…

Time crept by, unrelentingly slow, forcing Rafael to battle his own thoughts for second after agonizing second until finally he felt the balm of evening cover his face. It was dark enough to get ready, dark enough to lift himself out of his self-imposed soul-searching. It hadn’t done him any good. He felt anxious, prickly and confused. His nerves were on edge and his newly enhanced eyes darted this way and that, staring penetratingly into the darkening recesses below him even though he knew it was too early, too soon. Xian might be leaving now, perhaps. Perhaps he’d wait until full night. He should, for his own sake. He had—

A shift. It was so fast he barely caught it, just shadows moving within deeper shadows. Black on gray, like a hole in the night. Rafael narrowed his eyes. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t have gotten here by now. It wasn’t safe enough for him to move in the Lower City before the sun went down, much less pick his way through the dead zone. Instinctually he readied his crossbow, drawing the slide back and inserting the first bolt even as he continued to strain into the darkness, looking for another hint of movement or, better yet, nothing.

No, there it was again,
damn it
! Too fast to see more than the vaguest silhouette, but it was him. It had to be. Gods curse him, how had the creature managed it? Rafael wasted a few more seconds mentally swearing before he pulled himself together. He’d been surprised. It didn’t matter. If Xian wanted to flit around the cathedral floor like a wraith, he could do that. If he stayed in one place for longer than it took to draw breath, he would be shot. Rafael hoped he could injure him badly enough with the first few shots to slow him down. He’d have to take Xian through the brain stem or the heart to kill him, and even for him that was practically impossible at this range without inflicting some serious damage first.

He positioned the crossbow on the stones and peered down the length of the stock, staring with wide, unfocused vision into the gloom of the old cathedral’s floor. The first hint, the first twitch… There, a fluttering of black, and he loosed the shot instantaneously, then cursed as the bolt skittered in a shower of sparks off the battered marble pillar. His position was compromised now, if it had ever really been secure in the first place. Xian had undoubtedly tracked the shot. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t get up to the alcove without exposing himself long enough for even an untrained man to shoot him. Rafael loaded another bolt and tried to relax.

It quickly became a game of cat and mouse between them, hunter and prey, only Rafael had the sinking feeling that his prey was toying with him. There weren’t that many pillars down there, not that many places to hide. Once a section of ground collapsed, but even as his pulse quickened with excitement, he saw the shadow of his master flutter effortlessly away from it, and he wasted another bolt venting his frustration at the apparition. Not a hit. Not one single hit, and he’d been trying for nearly fifteen minutes. It was ludicrous. He was an excellent shot and he had all the advantages, surely he should have grazed the bastard by now. He was running low on bolts as well.

There. Finally
! Xian moved backward at a diagonal, not as fast as he could have, and Rafael tracked him with the bolt and loosed before his target could change directions. He saw the falter mar the fluid movement and his lips curled in a snarl of satisfaction. Unfortunately his success was fleeting. His target was slowed, but just barely, and before he knew it he had used the last of his bolts.

Fucking hell, what would it take to grind him down? Rafael gritted his teeth and grabbed his blades and dart gun. He’d have to close the distance some if he wanted to get any sort of residual advantage out of that first injury. He resolutely blocked his mind to the idea that his wounded prey was drawing him out of his safe haven and swung down from the ledge, moving cautiously even as his eyes continued to seek out Xian’s movement. He kept the stone between him and his former master as best he could. Rafael knew if Xian had bothered to bring a long-range weapon with him he’d already be dead, but it still didn’t hurt to be wary.

He fired darts from the gun as soon as his feet touched the ground, spraying the silver-tipped needles in a rapid staccato rhythm as he tracked Xian. The darts wouldn’t kill him, not even close, but the silver acted like a magic sink and made the flesh of a High One crawl as it consumed their life force. He was within twenty feet of the creature and at this distance, in the last pale tatters of light, he could make out some details. Xian was covered with dark, glistening fabric that billowed with every move he made. It also, Rafael noted, seemed to do an excellent job of stopping projectiles from reaching his body. The fabric glowed briefly when a needle struck it but held the silver fast. As quickly as he could fire, the fabric moved, swirling in a protective pattern in front of that powerful body. It captivated him at the same time as it frustrated him, and that frustrated Rafael even further. Furiously he worked his way closer, trying to force the elusive figure toward less stable footing, but somehow he found himself being maneuvered in a circle, drawn into a dance he didn’t have control of.

Realizing what was happening, Rafael jerked his eyes away from the mesmerizing figure that kept evading him and tried to regain some control of the situation. He stepped backward, back toward his own shadows and a chance to regroup. He found a flaw in the stonework instead, and the marble, one moment so solid beneath his feet, crumbled to nothingness in the next. Rafael twisted serpentine-like in midair and stretched to catch himself, losing his grip on the forgotten dart gun in his effort to find purchase, but there was nothing, nothing but a hungry emptiness beneath him that would swallow him whole.

Suddenly he was flying in the opposite direction. It happened so fast that he barely had time to register the change in his circumstances and the pain of whiplash in his neck before he crashed into a stone pillar. This one held, but he had barely regained his feet before the apparition he had been chasing suddenly became all too real. The heavy cloak was gone, and in its place Rafael could clearly distinguish the long limbs and broad torso of his former master. He was still swathed from head to foot with the black fabric, but within the folds he could discern the pearlescent glitter of white eyes. It was like a knife to the heart. His master was looking at him, seeing him for the first time in five years, and it filled Rafael with an inexplicable rage. Why now? Why like this, when the circumstances couldn’t have been any worse? Why only when he forced him to violence did his master care enough to come for him?

Driven by demons that had been festering inside him for a lifetime, Rafael launched off the pillar, drawing his sabers and attacking with a speed that surprised even him. The ferocity of his attack caught Xian off guard, and now it was he who was forced backward, driven to defensiveness under the insane onslaught. Rafael was beyond caring about the contract, who he had killed, why they were here or whether he lived or died. His pain was given life in the form of his blades, and it sliced deep. He cut and was rewarded with a pale flash of flesh opening up over Xian’s left arm. He cut again, was parried, and traded blows that nearly numbed his arm before he forced another opening. The slash was high on his opponent’s chest this time, and he barely saw skin before the wound welled with that thick, precious magical blood. He could smell it, like something out of his dreams, and the scent of something he’d been denied for so long just incensed him further.

Rafael pressed the attack, oblivious to where they were headed or whether the ground was safe or not. He didn’t actively block or protect himself. Every movement was aggressive, every strike an attempt to cut. He left openings, he had to, but his master didn’t capitalize on them. Rafael attacked and Xian defended, block for strike and parry for thrust, until a flicker-fast edge cut his opponent high across the forehead. Thick cloth parted, hair tumbled down like a silver wave and Rafael was suddenly staring into the pale, blood-streaked face of his master.

The cut was small, hardly more than a scratch. The blood ran in a slender rivulet down the inside of Xian’s brow, past his right eye and onto his cheek. His face was so similar to the one Rafael had seen two nights ago, but it was so different too. It wasn’t just any High One’s face, it was his master’s face. The hideous reality of what he was doing suddenly seeped back into Rafael’s consciousness, and the sheer wrongness of it made what was left of his soul shriek with pain. This wasn’t his place. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t. Fifteen years of conditioning couldn’t be undone by five years of neglect.

Before he could do more than hesitate, though, Xian was on him. His feet flew out from under him and Rafael was thrown to his back, the breath driven from his lungs as he impacted the floor. He barely had time to register the negligible, pricking pain in his side and the appearance of his master’s face, his hair shielding their locked gaze like a curtain, before it dissolved into silver mist along with everything else as his consciousness faltered. Past the rush of blood in his ears and his own harsh gasping for breath, he vaguely heard the words, “Welcome back, pet,” before the darkness flooded in and mercifully drowned him.

Chapter Five

Revival was excruciating.

Rafael regained consciousness much more slowly than he’d lost it, but apart from that the circumstances were very similar. He could tell he was strung up in a large chamber, nearly as large and open as the floor of the ruined cathedral where he had so spectacularly failed his last assignment. He was in pain, a fiery ache spreading from his wrists down his shoulders and radiating out from his much-abused back. He heard slow footsteps move across the cold stone floor, but he didn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see yet, not yet. His memories were bad enough, and he had plenty of memories of this particular room.

They were alone. Rafael could tell that much without looking, but it wasn’t reassuring in the slightest. He shouldn’t be alive. Xian had taken a contract out on him, and an assassin’s contract, with very few exceptions, was a death sentence. They didn’t usually toy with their prey, although Rafael bitterly admitted to himself that their fight might well have qualified as playing for all the effectiveness he’d had against his former master. A failure. That was what he was, that was all he had ever been and he had proved that quite spectacularly. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t ever want to wake up again. Why hadn’t Xian killed him?

Rafael’s masochistic side forced his mind to replay the fight. It was so clear, in retrospect. Xian had played him beautifully, enticing him into wasting his crossbow bolts with his game of hide-and-seek, pretending injury to coerce Rafael into abandoning the high ground to try to capitalize on the wound before Xian was healed. The cloth, that magnificent gleaming black cloak had protected his former master from the wrath of the sun as well as the rain of silver needles Rafael had shot at him. And when they’d closed… Shame burned through Rafael’s chest, making him squeeze his eyes shut, trying to deny it. He had tried. He truly had tried to kill Xian, at first. He had made a supreme effort, especially after he’d nearly fallen to death when the floor crumbled to a yawning pit beneath his feet. He should have died then, but now he knew Xian had pulled him back and saved him from that dark, solitary end. Why? So he could revel in his former apprentice’s inadequacies and watch him shatter beneath the realization that even after five years of living a life of vengeful sorrow and anger, in the end he couldn’t move to kill his master? Did Xian sense the hopelessness in Rafael as he had realized that, the futile frustration and self-loathing? He could have run Rafael through right then.