Shadow City Read online

  Alexander scowled. Tutresiel was baiting him. He snarled, hating to ask, but having no choice. “What do you recommend?”

  “Easiest way to figure out what’s inside is to jump in.”

  “Sounds stupid.”

  “That too.”

  Alexander’s Prime lunged to the fore. His human senses flattened, and the heightened instincts of the beast within took over. He rose and drew a combat knife from the sheath on his hip. “I guess Niko will have to wait,” he said, and leaped down off his perch. He strode purposefully toward the circle of mushrooms, but Tutresiel’s sword came down and barred the way. He glared at the angel. “Get out of my way.”

  “I wondered, but I didn’t know for sure until now. You are as stupid as you look,” Tutresiel said. “You’ll die if you jump into that throat.”

  “I am not that easy to kill,” Alexander said, shoving down on the sword with his knife. A jolt of electricity shot through him, and every hair on his body stood on end. His blood sizzled with the energy.

  “Maybe. But as much as I don’t care what happens to you, Max will, and she’s just crazy enough to hunt down the one way to kill me if I let you die. So call this self-preservation.” He paused for a moment and then frowned. “I shouldn’t have to say this, but given the fact that most of you idiots at Horngate have a ridiculously overblown sense of responsibility . . . Stay put. I can handle this.”

  With that, he hopped into the circle. The moment his feet touched, the ground split open and the angel plunged inside. A moment later, the circle of emerald grass rippled flat and pristine.

  Alexander could only stare in blank shock. Of all the things he might have expected from the angel, this was not one. Tutresiel was a selfish bastard. He looked after himself and no one else.

  A few seconds passed, and a tremor shook the ground. Everything went quiet. Not even a bird chirped. A long minute passed. Then, suddenly, the grass inside the ring erupted. Blood, dirt, and gravel spewed in every direction. Tutresiel exploded upward in a shining whirlwind, his wings slashing and chopping.

  He halted ten feet above the hole, his sword held high. Blood and gore clung to his wings and splattered his body. He grinned with vicious triumph, and the sword vanished. He extended his wings, and the blood ran off them as if expelled, leaving them silver-bright as usual. He floated down to stand beside the gaping hole he had made.

  “Impressive,” Alexander said, peering down inside. The walls had caved in and there was little enough to be seen. “What was it?”

  “It was a nest of some kind and full of very hungry, very vicious young. I didn’t see any adults. We’ll have to keep watch. If they’d reached adulthood, they’d have infested the area like killer cockroaches.”

  “You should do a flyover,” Alexander said. “Look for the parents. I will search on the ground.”

  “First, I’ll go report to Niko. Unless, of course, you’ve decided to stop sniveling and do what you are made to do?”

  Alexander gave a short jerk of his head.

  Tutresiel shrugged. “Then I don’t think I’m going to bother listening to you giving me orders.”

  With that, the angel launched into the air. Alexander watched him disappear. His teeth ground together. The problem was that Tutresiel did not understand. None of them did. He could not take on Prime. If he did, none of them would ever see Max again.

  Pain boiled up inside him again, and he gasped, letting it flood through his body. He did not know how to survive it. But he had no choice.

  HE PAUSED ON A PINNACLE OVERLOOKING A SMALL VALLEY. A small herd of elk grazed below. A mountain lion sprawled watchfully on a limb on the far end, waiting for the elk to wander closer. There was no sign of the adult creatures or the fairies who’d made the mushroom ring.

  It was not long before Niko appeared. He was a blocky man with black hair. Muscles piled on muscles, moving like an oiled shadow over the ground. He was danger personified. But then, so was Alexander.

  “Something on your mind, Niko?”

  It pleased him to no end when the other man started. The thick smell of magic overwhelmed his own scent, and the power of his constantly aroused Prime was a thick cloud that spread over miles. Without a reliable scent trail, Niko had been forced to follow Alexander’s tracks and Tutresiel’s directions.

  The other man stared up at him, his body tense. He was itching for a fight. Alexander’s lip curled. Niko was good, but he was no match for Alexander.

  “You need to come with me. There’s something you need to see,” he announced curtly.

  Alexander turned away. “Get Tutresiel and Xaphan. Whatever the problem is, they can handle it.”

  “Fuck them. We want you.”

  “I just gave you my advice. There is nothing I can do that a pair of angels cannot. Besides, I am busy. We might have a fairy infestation, or did Tutresiel forget to tell you?”

  Niko growled in frustration. “The fairies can wait. As for your advice, you can stick it up your ass. This is a lot more important.”

  That caught Alexander’s attention. He gave Niko a long, hard look. The Blade looked worried, more than he had since Max’s disappearance. “What do you want me to see?” he asked finally.

  “You’d better come.” Niko turned and leaped down into the gully and back up the other side. He glided almost soundlessly.

  Alexander followed, feeling like a rhinoceros blundering through a china shop. He had spent the better part of a century in cities, and the quiet of the wilderness was hard to achieve.

  The covenstead spread over miles of mountains west of Missoula, Montana. At its heart was the Keep carved inside a mountain. In the river valley outside were a dozen long greenhouses, and on the peaks around perched cabins where members of the covenstead lived. Or they had, before the Guardian attacks almost two months ago. Now many of those homes were deserted, their occupants dead.

  Niko circled around to the other side of Horngate’s necklace of perimeter wards. East of the covenstead, they came to a tightly rucked blanket of ridges. The trees were thick here. Boulders and loose rock littered the crevices between the steep hillsides.

  They picked their way carefully over the broken landscape and down into a shadowy gorge. Alexander felt a surge of something the moment he set foot on the uneven bottom. The ground hummed with a low vibration that sent a dull ache up his legs. He glanced sharply at Niko. “What is this?”

  Niko shook his head. “Up ahead. You’ll see.”

  They wound through the piles of boulders and tangles of scrub juniper. The ground was dry, and the grass crackled beneath their feet. Above, the stars glittered like ice in the velvet night. The smell of Uncanny magic was suffocating, nearly drowning out the slighter scent of Divine magic.

  They came through a notch between two granite blocks, each the size of a Greyhound bus. On one side was a clearing. On the far side was a power circle. The outer ring was grayish powder—a mix of salt, herbs, metals, and whatever else witches used to create binding circles. It was a good six inches wide. Inside was another ring. It glowed a sullen red. Within was a fat column of oily black smoke perhaps twenty-five feet tall. It curled and twisted with violent motion.

  The hair on Alexander’s entire body prickled. He forced himself to walk closer.

  Tyler crouched on the hillside above, just outside Horngate’s perimeter wards. He was a slight man, with a dancer’s grace and an artist’s skill with a blade. He’d recently shorn his hair to a short bristle cut, but his minstrel mustache and goatee remained. He spun a knife in his fingers. As Niko and Alexander approached, he leaped down the scree to land softly on the balls of his feet, sliding the knife into a sheath strapped behind his neck.

  “What is this?” Alexander wondered aloud.

  “We were hoping you could tell us. We’ve never seen anything like it,” Tyler replied.

  At the sound of their voices, the smoke whirled and bulged, pressing against the invisible walls of the containment circle.

  “It
lies in the path of the old perimeter wards,” Niko said, pointing to a charred circle on the ground. It ran straight through the center of the ring. “That can’t be coincidence.”

  “Have you told Giselle?”

  “Not yet.”

  So they came to him first. His lips tightened. Damn them. He was not their Prime. Alexander turned away from the writhing smoke. “You should do that. She will want to know.”

  The other two men exchanged a glowering look. “You know, I’m about ready to kick your ass,” Niko said.

  Alexander smiled. It felt stiff and wooden. Inside, his Blade licked its lips, hungry for blood. “Try.”

  “What is your problem? You claim you want a place here, but all you do is throw it in our faces. This is what Max wanted. You know it.”

  “Time for you to step up, son,” Tyler added in his laconic way, echoing Tutresiel’s earlier statement. His tone did nothing to hide the tension coiling through him. Alexander was not the only one spoiling for a fight.

  He barely held himself in check. Killing Tyler and Niko would not help get Max back. Besides, he liked them. Instead, he turned away and went to sit on an outcropping of rock. The others eyed him uncertainly. They had not expected him to just calmly sit.

  Alexander rubbed a hand over his mouth as he considered telling them the truth. They might stop badgering him.

  He reached under the collar of his shirt and hooked a woven leather strap with his fingers. He drew out a gold disk almost the size of his palm. On one side was a round black diamond the size of a peach pit. Small orange opals traced a glimmering line along the outer rim. Outward-pointing arrows were interspersed among the opals like the rays of a sun. Around the thick edge of the disk were written words in a language Alexander did not understand. They spiraled down over the back to the center to end in a small stylized Egyptian eye.

  He pulled the strap over his head and gazed down at the disk. For years, he had craved it. It was worth a king’s ransom. More. Now he wished he had never seen it. He turned it in his fingers, then came to a decision. Secrecy had done him no good so far.

  He drew a knife from the sheath on his hip. It was a combat knife, both edges honed sharp. He cut deeply across the pad of his thumb and quickly smeared his blood across the amulet before his healing spells could close the wound. The cold, heavy stickiness of the invisibility spell closed over him.

  “What the fuck?” Tyler exclaimed.

  Niko just watched the place where Alexander was sitting, his brow furrowed.

  Alexander wiped his knife on his jeans and sheathed it. “Did you know that Magpie has the gift of true prophecy?” he asked conversationally, the corner of his mouth lifting in a sardonic smile as Tyler started. Hearing the thin air talking took some getting used to.

  “Prophecy?” Niko repeated.

  Alexander turned the amulet in his fingers. “Apparently, whatever she sees always comes true. Or so she assures me. Giselle seems to be of the same opinion.”

  “Get to the point,” Tyler said. His knife was back in his hand, and he was twirling it between his fingers. It would take barely a second for him to launch it, and even without seeing Alexander, he was sure to hit him.

  “Magpie came to see me. The same day that Max’s family was kidnapped.”

  He remembered it with preternatural clarity. He’d been in his apartment deep within Horngate’s mountain fortress. Magpie had opened the door, pushing through the wards as if they were not there. At first, he had thought she must be Max, who was the only person he knew who could open any lock without trouble. It was one of the gifts Giselle had layered into her making.

  Expectant hope had flooded through him and then died beneath a deluge of cold shock when Magpie entered. Foreboding grasped him in a hard hand. The witch’s eyes were entirely white. She had fixed him with that unworldly gaze and had delivered the fateful prophecy in a guttural voice that was nothing like her own sharply cut tones.

  The amulet is coming to you. It will give you your heart’s desire. You will be Prime.

  Later, she had assured him that her prophecies were always true, that he should ignore her words at his own peril. Alexander had long dreamed that the Amengohr amulet would be his. It lent him invisibility at night and allowed him to walk safely in the sunlight during the day. For a moment, he had been elated. He would have the amulet and his heart’s desire—to be accepted at Horngate. But the cost was too high if it meant he would become Prime. He had known such a thing could only happen if Max was dead. Then the prophecy had started to come true. First, Niko and Tyler had begun to accept him as one of Horngate’s Shadowblades, then Alexander had obtained the amulet, and finally, at the moment of her kidnapping, Max had ordered Giselle to make Alexander Horngate’s Prime.

  He would not do it. If he did, she would not have a reason to return. The universe would not have a reason to give her back. His face twisted. Maybe it was irrational, but he could not risk it. He could not chance that taking Prime would mean losing Max forever.

  Alexander rubbed the blood away roughly, feeling the sticky cloak of invisibility fade. He stared down at the disk, his fingers clenching around it until the edge cut into his flesh. “I will not let it be true. I will not be Prime. Nor will I let anyone else take it. She will have to come back.”

  “Holy mother of fuck,” Niko murmured.

  Alexander glanced sharply at the other man. That was one of Max’s favorite phrases. His jaw knotted as he fought down the ball of molten fury and pain at the reminder of her.

  “Crap on a cracker,” Tyler swore as he strode up and down in front of the column of black smoke. He did not seem to notice it. “So, all we have to do is kill you and it ends the prophecy. Poof! We get Max back.”

  “Not necessarily,” Niko said slowly. “All it means is that Alexander won’t be Prime. Doesn’t mean Max will come back, even if we could kill him. Not likely if Magpie’s prophecies really do always come true.”

  “Shit.” Tyler’s knife whirled in his fingers as he eyed Alexander. “Still, isn’t it worth a shot? No offense, son, but I want Max back, and if it takes giving you a dirt nap, then I’m all for it.”

  Alexander smiled, cold and feral. “I do not disagree, though you understand that I would have to fight you all the same.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to come to that,” Niko said thoughtfully, tapping his fingers on his thigh. “In fact . . . we want you to become Prime. Now more than ever.”

  “No!” The fury in Alexander erupted uncontrollably, and the Shadowblade took control. He moved in a blur. He lunged and snatched Niko by the throat, throwing him against the rock hillside with all his strength. Bones broke as Niko’s body bounced like a crash-test dummy.

  Alexander leaped to finish the kill, and Tyler knocked him out of the air. He landed on his side and flipped up onto his feet. He swept Tyler’s legs out from underneath him and pounded a fist into the side of his head. Alexander moved fluidly, with all the sinuous grace of a cobra. Reason was gone. Only the need to kill remained.

  Once Tyler lay sprawled and unmoving on the ground, Alexander spun to look for Niko. The other man stood dazed at the bottom of the slope. Blood ran down the side of his head and dampened his collar. He lifted his hands in a sign of surrender.

  “C’mon, now. Settle down. Get ahold of your Blade. Just hear me out on this. You know I want Max back, and till just now, I would have said I wanted her as much or more than you. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. You know that. So, listen.”

  He spoke carefully. Alexander shook himself, trying to ignore the words. He did not want logic or reason. He wanted action. He wanted Max. But she would hate him if he killed any of her Blades. She counted on him to look after Horngate. To look after her family, which included Niko and Tyler.

  A tide of cold reality washed over Alexander, quenching the volcanic fury of his Blade. He forced the predator down until he was in control. It was a near thing. But finally, he grappled it into its cage.
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br />   “Explain,” he ordered Niko through clenched teeth.

  The other man sagged down onto a rock, wiping blood from his neck with his knuckles. “What if you’ve got the prophecy wrong?” he asked, then groaned and rubbed a hand against the back of his head. “Damn, that hurts.”

  When Alexander twitched like he was going to jump on him, Niko sighed. “Just think for a minute. You’ve been basing everything on the assumption that your heart’s desire is to become a member of Horngate. But you’re walking the thin edge of going rabid, and it’s all because of Max. Because she’s what you really want. Would you really be so eager to join Horngate if Max wasn’t part of the package?” He didn’t wait for Alexander’s answer. “It sure as hell isn’t because of the rest of us. You’re bleeding to death without her.

  “Don’t you get it? If she really is your heart’s desire, then only one part of the prophecy has actually come true. If you want her back, you have to make the rest happen. You take Prime, and then she’ll have to come back, because the prophecy says you’ll get your heart’s desire.”

  Alexander stared as the words percolated through his skull. He closed his eyes and sucked in a harsh breath, hope knifing deep into his soul. Could it be true? It was possible. It even made sense. Niko was right. Since Max had disappeared, Alexander could think of nothing else but getting her back, of seeing her one more time. He opened his eyes. “I cannot risk it.”

  “The hell you can’t,” Tyler exclaimed as he struggled up. “Your reasoning sucks ass. You don’t give a shit about Horngate. If you did, you’d have grabbed Prime with both hands. But you won’t, because your dick’s in a knot over Max. That should be proof enough for you.”

  Alexander said nothing. It made sense. But—

  Doubt clamped him. He wanted desperately to believe it, but from the moment he had met Max, he had known that she would die before abandoning Horngate. The stone-cold certainty that if he took her place she would have to be dead would not let him go. He shook his head.

  “Holy mother of fuck! What do we have to say to get you to pull your head out of your ass?” Tyler demanded.