Shadow's Awakening: The Shadow Warder Series, Book One (An Urban Fantasy Romance Series) (31 page)

“Who?” Conner’s voice vibrated with rage. Hannah felt fatigue creeping in, weighing her down, slowing her brain. She cuddled into Conner’s chest, rubbing her cheek against his smooth skin.

“Michael. I don’t know what he wants. He examined me.” Hannah shuddered at the memory. “He put a collar on me so I can’t reach my power. Makes me tired. Said he’s testing me.”

She felt Conner’s fingers search her neck and find the copper collar. He gave it a tug, quickly finding it too strong to break. Hannah sighed into him, trying to push back the fatigue. Exhaustion broke over her in a heavy wave, pulling her down.

“Can’t stay awake. Are you going to find me? I don’t want to stay there. They’re hurting me.”

Conner’s answering murmur was lost as Hannah fell from the dream. She fought to stay with Conner, refusing to open her eyes. Despite her dreaming desires, she slipped into a natural sleep, her mind and body alone.

Conner jerked awake, hands fisted in his bedsheets. The wet grass beneath him, Hannah’s weight on his chest, the milky moonlight, all gone. His dreams had never been that vivid, that shockingly real, right down to the sheet glued to his cock with sticky moisture. He’d been missing Hannah with a painful ache. He’d even gotten drunk on bad whiskey with Kiernan, spilling his guts about her—how he hadn’t wanted to leave her and he hoped she’d call him once she’d gotten settled in. He guessed he should have expected he’d dream about her.

Except that wasn’t the dream he would have thought he’d have. The sex, sure. The amazing, mind-blowing sex he had with Hannah was exactly what he would have thought he’d dream of. But the hospital gown she was wearing? The faint medicinal smell he’d noticed tainting her natural sunshine scent? The twining copper strands of the collar on her neck and the bruises on her wrists—not details he would have dreamed up. Maybe he was just feeling guilty about abandoning her.

You didn’t abandon her
, Conner reminded himself. He’d sent her to the Shadows where she would be safe and had given her a way to contact him. He didn’t have anything to be guilty about. Unless she hadn’t made it to the Shadows. Dream walking was supposed to be a myth, but Hannah was a Shadow. There was probably all sorts of shit the Shadows could do that Warders thought was a myth.

Rearranging the pillow under his neck, Conner accepted that he wasn’t going to be able to ignore the bad feeling he’d had since he’d left Hannah in Alexa’s office. He'd been writing it off as so many things: guilt, missing Hannah, sexual frustration. It was also possible that the bad feeling he had was because something bad was actually going on. Didn’t they live in an impossible world? The Warders and the Shadows were the children of the unreal, their demon prey equally unbelievable if you didn’t already know they existed. So who was Conner to say what made sense and what didn’t? He was going to have to track down the Oracle to confirm that Hannah had gotten to her people safely. And if Zach wasn’t going to answer his goddamned phone, Conner would find another Shadow to help him. He wouldn’t be able to rest easy until he knew that Hannah was okay.

Hannah lay on the thin mattress after another day of boredom interspersed with horrifying trips to the exam room with Henry and Michael. Michael didn’t seem interested in causing her pain for the fun of it, but he didn’t care if his experiments hurt her. He didn’t care how she felt about anything. She wasn’t a person to them. She was a lab rat. Not for the first time, she wondered what they wanted with her. Another round of testing and their purpose wasn’t any clearer. Despair, heavy and dark, crept into her heart.

She wanted to dream again, to see Conner one more time. The last week felt like a cosmic joke. Get rescued by a handsome, brave hero, fall for him, then give him up to be noble and end up worse off than before. What fucking luck. She wasn’t going to lie to herself any more. The last few days had stripped away any need for self-delusion. Her life couldn’t get much worse—why not be honest with herself? She loved Conner. He was kind, smart, almost unbearably sweet in his understated way. Really hot. Amazing in bed. He filled an empty place she hadn’t known was there until Conner slotted himself in and made her whole.

It was logical that her desperate subconscious would craft an erotic dream about him. Except Hannah had seen it when she’d glanced in the metal mirror in her tiny bathroom. An oval, maroon splotch on the side of her neck. A hickey. Love bite. Whatever you wanted to call it, Hannah had one right at the juncture of her shoulder and neck. She hadn’t had it when she’d gone to bed. Even if she’d missed it, Michael and Henry had cataloged every inch of her flesh when they examined her. They would have noted it. Yet sometime during her night’s sleep it appeared.

With a shiver, she recalled the sting of Conner’s teeth biting into her neck as he’d moved inside her. Not enough to break the skin. Just hard enough to claim her. To hold her still underneath him. The way he’d sucked on the bite to soothe the pain. At the time, it had driven her wild. And it seemed to have left a mark that existed in the waking world. Hannah rubbed the tender spot with her fingertips. She’d been careful to pull her long hair over to cover the mark before Michael and Henry could see it.

Fortunately, her quick-healing body had erased it before they realized it was there. Hannah had no idea what it might mean, but she knew she didn’t want Michael to know anything about it. Sighing, she thought about counting sheep. It was too early to sleep, but she didn’t have anything else to do. All this thinking was depressing her.

A whisper drifted into her visions of flying sheep, floating on the edge of her consciousness. Hannah caught at it, not sure she’d heard anything. Again, it was there, buried in the back of her brain, calling out to her.

“Can you hear me, Shadow?” Tinny and far away, it was high and light, the voice of a young girl.

Hannah’s heart sped up. She opened her mouth to reply, then shut it with a snap. Answering out loud was a dumb idea. She tried to project back to the voice. “I can hear you. Who are you?”

A giggle trilled through, still distant, but clearer. “One of the other prisoners. Shadows like you.”

“I didn’t know there were others,” Hannah said, stomach clenching. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that she might not be the only one? Whatever Michael was up to, it was clearly on a bigger scale than she’d imagined.

“Three. Me, my older sister and a friend. We were taken together almost a year ago. I don’t think there are any others. I can’t talk long. I don’t have much power and this kind of talking can leave traces. I don’t want him to catch us.”

“Have you tried to get away?” Hannah asked, heart thumping with excitement.

“Not since the first few weeks. The collar steals your strength. We didn’t know. Didn’t try hard enough at the beginning. We were too scared. Now it’s too late. They don’t take us out any more, just come in here.”

“What do they want with us? What have they been doing to you?”

“Sara and I are okay. They just do tests. But my sister. She’s older. She doesn’t talk to us any more. They’ve been—” The voice cut off abruptly, leaving silence hanging in her head.

“Wait! Where are you? Come back!” Hannah abruptly recalled that the girl had said their communication could leave traces. Had she been caught? Or had she just run out of energy? Not for the first time, Hannah wished she had some kind of clue what she was doing. Could all Shadows talk to each other mentally? Could she reach out to the little girl? Not a good idea to try. If it left traces, she’d just end up getting them caught. In a rush of temper, she threw her pillow across the room. It gave an unsatisfyingly quiet thump as it hit the ground. Discovering she wasn’t alone was progress, but it felt like another dead end.

Chapter Nineteen

Conner listened to the phone ring with a sense of futility. He’d called this number so many times in the past few days the ten digits were imprinted in his memory. Zach’s voice echoing down the line was so unexpected Conner almost dropped the phone.

“Hello?”

“Zach. Where the fuck have you been?”

“Busy. What can I do for you?” Scratching noises, as if Zach were writing with a dull pencil.

“Where’s Hannah? I need to talk to her. I’ll go to her. Just tell me where she is.” The pause on the other end of the line sent a sick weight into Conner’s gut.

“You don’t know where Hannah is?” Zach asked carefully.

“Four days ago I brought her into the Citadel. A Shadow was supposed to meet her there.”

Another pause, this one long and heavy. “Conner, we never got a call to pick her up.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Conner shot to his feet, pacing with long strides. In his cramped living room, he barely took a few steps before he had to turn around.

“I told you not to bring her in until you heard from me,” Zach said, (his?) voice hard with anger. It was the first time Conner had heard him anything other than relaxed and laid back. This was a different Zach, all business and not amused.

“I didn’t have a choice. We were attacked and you weren’t answering the goddamned phone. I needed to get her somewhere safe.”

“Yeah? Good plan. Then where the hell is she? Because she’s not with us and she’s not with you, so I doubt she’s somewhere safe.”

“Fuck you,” Conner shouted into the phone. An immature loss of control, but he couldn’t hold back the outburst. He dragged in a deep breath. More than a century and a half of living and this sharp slice of pure panic was a new sensation. He’d been sitting around moping over Hannah for days and she was missing. Bile churned in his stomach. Marshaling all of his soldier’s discipline, Conner tried to pull it together. When he spoke again his voice was level, if not exactly calm. “Can you track her?” he asked. “I’ll see what I can find out on my end.”

“I’ll try,” Zach said. “I can tell you that she never made it to us. Your people never called to report they’d found her. I’d look to your own first.”

“I dreamed of her last night. It felt real until I woke up.”

“It probably was real. Or real enough,” Zach said. “Did she say anything about where she was?”

“She said that Michael, one of our Directorate, has her in a lab somewhere.”

“Well, there you go. You didn’t need me after all.”

“You expect me to believe that Michael kidnapped Hannah? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? I’m not the guy’s biggest fan, but he’s Directorate. One of our leaders. It’s not possible.” Sick dread weighed in Conner’s gut. No way could Michael be involved in something like what Hannah had described.

“No,” Zach said with quiet resolution. “I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m not the one who told you that. The question is, do you believe Hannah?”

“It was just a dream,” Conner said, wincing at the desperation in his voice.

“If that’s what you think, then I really can’t help you.” Zach fell silent.

Conner waited for the tone signaling Zach had hung up, but it didn’t come. Finally, Conner spoke. “I’ll see what I can find out. It doesn’t make sense that Michael has her. Maybe the Shadow who picked her up didn’t bring her in for some reason.”

“My cousin may be able to track her. Kate hasn’t been feeling well, but I’ll talk to her.”