Chapter 10
A shrill series of beeps wrenched Layla
out of a dreamless sleep. All the lights in her apartment were on,
and the phone was ringing in the front room. Something was wrong.
Her apartment was alarmed.
She fell out of bed, blinking dumbly,
and stumbled through the bedroom doorway to pick up the
receiver.
An automated voice said, “A wraith
incursion is in progress at the Segue perimeter. Please remain in
your room until—” Which cleared her mind completely with a jet of
adrenaline. Wraiths? “—you have further instructions. The Segue
building is in lockdown for your safety.”
The line went dead. Layla dragged a
hand through her hair to steady herself. The dregs of sleep were
now flotsam in her waking mind.
And then she remembered
everything.
What had she done?
Correction. What had she allowed to be
done to her? Just thinking of it made her skin heat with
embarrassment. She wrapped her arms around herself. Squeezed to
extinguish the burn of humiliation. Khan was hiding something from
her. Bastard. And he was going to tell her.
“Khan?”
No answer.
She found her sweats, a pair of Segue
loaners, and shoved her feet into her shoes. She peeked out her
window. It was still dark. All was quiet on her side of the
building except the beat of her heart.
“Khan?” She was freaking talking to
herself.
Far away, she heard shots fired. Her
adrenaline kicked up a notch. What she wouldn’t give to see Segue
in action.
She tried the front door. Locked. She
turned the bolt. Still locked.
Which was dumb. A door wouldn’t stop
wraiths. Besides, the wraiths weren’t near the building, and with
all of Segue’s firepower, they weren’t likely to get close. There
was no reason she should be locked inside. This was her story,
after all, the only thing keeping her sane. Especially after . .
.
Layla dropped onto the sofa, her head
in her hands. This was not acceptable. Tomorrow she and Adam would
have to come to an agreement. “I hate
controlling men.”
In the silence of the moment, the lock
to her apartment door went snick.
Khan. So he was still
there.
Layla rose, tried her hand on the
lever, which now worked.
Very handy trick. “Okay,” she said to
the air, “but we’ve got to talk later.”
Layla threw open the door and jogged
toward the elevator. Damn it, she wanted her camera. Her camera,
stolen with her car, and her gun, which was in Zoe’s possession. A
sense of being followed had her glancing over her shoulder; so Khan
had her back. No gun necessary. A sensuous whoosh of darkened air
on her skin made her abdomen clench. Yeah, he was there all right.
Damn him.
She opened the door to the stairs,
which must have signaled something to Segue security, because two
steps inside the stairwell and a metal wall of bars came down in
front of her, cutting off her progress down the stairs. She turned
back just as another sudden wall trapped her in the space, like a
cage. It had to be some kind of precaution against wraiths, built
along with Segue’s renovation. And she guessed it made sense that
they’d block entrances and passageways in the event of a wraith
attack, but it was hugely inconvenient for her.
Or was it? The teleport thing, what
Khan called “passing.” She debated for half a sec, then decided.
“Do you mind taking me to where I need to go? You know, close
enough to see, but not so close I get my head bitten
off?”
The stairwell darkened. Layla clutched
the railing. A slow stroke of air moved around her body. A rush of
Shadow, an embrace of shuddering magic, and she was on uneven
earth.
Layla blinked hard against the dramatic
shift from Segue light to predawn dark. The horizon was just barely
beginning to whiten. The sharp winter air singed her lungs but she
didn’t feel cold.
Sparks flashed with a volley of
automatic weapons fire, startling her heart. She could make out
human shapes, but whether man or wraith, she couldn’t tell. She
picked her way forward, squinting to see. There was movement to her
left. The low buzz of a voice. Male. A bunch of men.
Had to be Segue soldiers. One turned,
as if sensing her presence.
“Ms. Mathews?”
Adam.
“For chrissake, you should be
inside.”
“I’m not a stay-inside kind of girl.”
Reckless was her middle name. Adam had no idea.
Layla knelt down behind them. Adam
didn’t object. He and his men went back to peering at some kind of
army technology that displayed glowy human forms moving across a
gridded terrain.
Adam tapped on the screen, which
shifted vantages. “Where’s Khan?”
Of course, Adam would know how she got
there, and so quickly. How else could she get through his security
and out of the Segue building, some three hundred yards
away?
“Somewhere. He won’t show
himself.”
Adam grunted. Obviously, Khan’s
behavior wasn’t unusual to him.
Layla scanned the woods, letting her
eyes adjust to make out a couple of crouched soldiers in the thick
brush. Bullets couldn’t kill a wraith, but they’d slow it down long
enough that a trained team could incapacitate and take it into
custody.
“How many?” she whispered.
“At least six,” Adam answered. “This
isn’t a full-blown attack. They’re just testing the perimeter with
small parties.”
“What are they after?”
He flicked his gaze over. “Talia.
Always Talia.”
The look in his eyes—worry, anger,
frustration—made Layla like him for once. Every day he worked to
stop the wraiths, crouching in the cold dark to keep his wife and
children safe. He was a soldier, like these men, dedicated to a
cause. If he was hard and controlling, she guessed he had reason to
be.
“The perimeter is secure, Mr. Thorne.
One casualty. One wraith in custody. No further
wraith-sign.”
“Doesn’t feel right,” he
answered.
Could’ve been the cold, but Layla had
that bad, skinprickling feeling, too. Like she was in the center of
a bull’s-eye, oblivious to the arrow winging her way. The soldiers
at least had night-vision gear. Adam had his technology. She was in
a T-shirt and sweats. But yeah, okay, with Mr. Enigma, dark lord of
the fae, nearby.
Layla cast her gaze around, though she
knew she wouldn’t find him, especially in the dark. A wooly group
of pines darted from the earth into the atmosphere. She followed
them up to the faint twinkles in the sky.
Just in time to see a . . . a
thing, a body, dropping from above. It
altered its trajectory toward her, its length flattening as it
descended. So not dropping, flying. It had no visible feet or
hands, though its trunk seemed to have mass. Old, ripped clothes
hung off its shoulders. Its face was ravaged with decay, mouth
open, teeth extended to feed. Wraith, but not wraith.
Layla grabbed the gun from Adam’s
holster, flicked the safety off, and fired above into shadow-webbed
branches.
“In the trees!” someone shouted a
little too late. Rapid gunshot report battered her
ears.
A roar of wind darkness blew through
the air, riffling her hair and blasting across her
back.
Her trigger finger stalled as the
wraith was caught midair, twisting, almost crawling up the sky. A
hideous crack broke the quiet as it bent
double, but the wrong way, then fell to the earth with the hollow
clatter of loose bones in a fleshy bag.
She’d seen a couple of wraiths brought
down before. She’d written about the experience. But never had she
seen one shredded like that. Had to be Khan at work again. Khan,
her door opener, dream lover, and wraith killer.
She searched the sky, heart pounding,
breath coming in great puffs of frosty air.
Another crack,
and she turned, bracing in fear as a wraith fell dead to the
ground.
The soldiers fired their guns again,
but if not for Khan, men would be dying.
Layla grabbed Adam’s arm. “Will they
hurt him?”
Adam had dark, hungry glee in his eyes,
a sharp smile cracking his face. “Not a bit.”
The sky went ashy, the sun finally
claiming the day. For a moment, Layla saw a swath of Shadow
whipping like a cloak around the silhouette of a man. Khan. He was
all darkness, arms outstretched, hands raised, body midpivot in the
sky. With a pulse, he dispersed into a gritty ink stain and
reformed some distance away, a tornado of black to cast another
wraith to death on the ground.
“Show-off,” Adam muttered.
Layla was breathless. “How does he do
that?”
“Do what?”
“Kill them so quickly, so easily. I’ve
never actually seen one die.”
Adam’s eyes glittered. “The wraiths are
dead already. He just, uh, seals the deal.”
The explanation made no sense. It had
to be a fae thing, a magic thing.
Adam was up, moving toward Khan’s first
kill. Which was crazy. More wraiths could be out there, yet Adam
seemed perfectly comfortable to move around without cover. His men
followed suit. Everyone was confident of their safety in Khan’s
presence.
Layla craned to look above and all
around her. Khan was still nowhere in sight, so she leapt,
stumbling through the brush, after Adam to follow the
story.
“I want the wraith remains picked up
and delivered to the holding cell for examination,” he was saying.
“This one here first.”
The smell was extraordinary, as if the
wraith had been long dead. Layla had to cover her mouth and nose
with her hand as she gazed down at the dry, yellowed husk of wraith
tissue and bone. In the bushes was a swatch of stringy, dirty hair
above jellied eyes. The remains lacked cohesion and weren’t
remotely recognizable as human.
“And to think,” Adam said, “not too
long ago you were camped out in my woods, all by
yourself.”
The memory made her wince with a
belated realization of how much danger she’d been in. She easily
could’ve been killed.
“What were you really after that day?”
Adam took a pair of surgical gloves out of his pocket, put them on,
crouched down.
Layla thought of how she’d sat with her
camera, willing Talia to step out of Segue. “A photo to run with my
story.”
She crouched down, too. What did Adam
think he could learn from the body? Was it still possible to
identify the man the wraith had once been?
But Adam was looking at her. “You
traveled down from New York, hiked for hours
from Middleton, climbed my wall, and waited out in the cold for a
photograph?”
“I know it sounds insane.” She couldn’t
believe she’d done it either.
Adam shook his head, his hard
expression softening. “Talia was all tears when she got back from
visiting you the other night. I think I understand a little better
now.”
Adam’s face was haggard with
exhaustion, there was a blood smear at his neck, and by the looks
of things, he had a day’s worth of work ahead of him before he
could rest. And if the wraiths were “testing the perimeter,” as
he’d said, then he might just be back out there again come
nightfall.
A team of men in plastic coveralls
joined them. They were masked and carried large, industrial-looking
gray boxes, presumably containing equipment to gather and clean up
the mess.
“We can talk more later, if you like,”
Adam said. “I’ve got to take care of things here now. And you can
keep the gun. You clearly know how to use it.”
She still gripped the handle, finger
light on the trigger. “Segue’s safe, then?”
“For the moment.”
She nodded, then stood and stepped back
to let the team do its thing while Adam managed the situation. Kept
the gun in her hand, though.
It was interesting, if disgusting,
work. She’d never seen a wraith killed before or been privy to the
collection of its remains. Her adrenaline tanking, Layla crossed
her arms to dispel a shiver of cold. The sun was over the horizon,
the world washed with pink. The smell of the woods seemed to warm,
but the temperature didn’t. Soldiers walked among the trees and
occasionally pinned the earth with a red flag to indicate the
location of remains. And somewhere above, Khan was watching. He’d
saved her life again.
An image of the wraith diving through
the air flashed through her mind. And here the public thought that
wraiths were diseased human beings.
“Can they all fly?” The alteration in
the wraith’s trajectory easily had been the most frightening moment
of the battle. And she’d been searching out their nests to discover
what made them work. How long would it have taken for her to arrive
at a paranormal explanation? Probably forever.
Adam looked over at her. “Wraiths can’t
fly any more than people can.”
Layla understood his reasoning, but . .
. “This one did. I swear it.”
Adam’s face subtly tightened, but he
didn’t respond.
“Really.” No one ever believed the
crazy shit she saw. She figured Adam would be different. “Ask
Khan.”
The cleanup team worked a slender
spatula tool into the earth, and Adam turned back to monitor their
work. She reeled back coughing when the movement of the remains
sent fresh stink into the air. Okay, discussion over.
She shivered again. Her ears ached from
the cold, though the sun was bright yellow through the trees. Time
to get back, take some notes on what she’d witnessed. She had a
vision of a wall of Post-its in her bedroom divided into three
parts for the three worlds. Maybe if she asked very nicely, someone
would get her a whiteboard and a handful of markers.
As she stepped away, Adam said
grudgingly, “I’ll check the tapes. Flying wraiths could be a
problem.”
The trees and growth around her
required some clambering and skin scratches before she got the few
yards away she needed to feel comfortable calling for Khan to take
her back.
“Khan?” She waited like a dummy for him
to pick her up in his whoosh of darkness, but that didn’t happen.
Was he there, and not answering? Or had he gone? Either way, she’d
have to walk the whole way back to Segue. Great. His mysterioso
business was getting to her. Yet another thing to talk
about.
A pop above had
her whirling, her gaze searching the branches. A resounding
crack, and she whipped to aim the gun
overhead. Wrong move. A great, black branch hurtled downward, and
she threw herself into the prickly thatches to escape its strike.
Got the skin scraped off her calf and ankle. Lost her
shoe.
She panted in shock as the men nearby
crashed through the growth toward her.
Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding, even
as she felt strong hands lifting her and placing her on the cold
earth. An army jacket was thrown over her shoulders, warm, while
some guy took a look at her leg.
“Damn it, I forgot. . . . By violence
or by accident,” Adam was
saying.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he bit back. “I just fucked
up, that’s all.”
“I’ll live,” Layla assured him, though
the scrapes stung pretty bad. Whatever spray that soldier guy was
using numbed the pain a little. No need to get upset. Just a
branch.
Adam scowled, his face going red, so
she figured she’d better shut up.
“I guess Khan’s gone,” she
offered.
“Yeah. I wish he’d told me first.” Adam
gestured to a couple of men—one of whom had been her ruddy-faced
escort, Kev, on the day of her ill-planned Segue photo op. “Get her
back to Segue. Make sure Patel looks at that leg. She’s prone to
life-threatening infection, I just know it.”
“No, I’m not,” Layla interjected. Now
he was really going overboard.
Adam lasered her with his
gaze.
She put her hands up in surrender.
“Fine. I’ll see Dr. Patel again. But I’m fine.”
“And watch for bears,” Adam said to
Kev. “If there are any left on the mountain, they’re sure to come
out of hibernation to be in these woods today with Layla around.”
To her, he said, “You stay inside, take stairs very carefully, and
chew your food well. Talia’s not losing you a second time if I can
help it.”
Chew my food?
What?
Layla went very still, the blood in her
veins rushing to a stop. Would these people never stop speaking in
riddles? “What’s going on?”
Adam’s frown deepened. He closed his
eyes, shook his head. “Never mind.”
“What did Khan tell you?” And how
convenient for him that he wasn’t there to answer the question
himself.
Kev and his partner looked
confused.
Branch. Infection. Bears. Chew her
freaking food? Her stomach turned as she mentally added to the
list: assault, car accident, gunfire.
“I’m going to die, right?” That had to
be it.
Adam went still and looked at her with
those tortured gray eyes of his. Finally, he exhaled. “Not if we
can help it. Not again.”
There was a resignation in Adam’s gaze,
a sad kind of premature “You’ve finally got it.” So Layla worked
fast to parse the riddle.
She was Kathleen, who had died. . . .
Yeah, around Layla’s age.
But she was still young. Healthy. She
should have years ahead of her. This was
nonsense. She wasn’t going to believe it at all.
Layla looked up at Adam. “How much time
do I have?”
His nostrils flared. His jaw twitched.
“As far as I know, you’ve been borrowing time for the past
twenty-four hours.”
Khan hung in the air like a crow, dark
wings stretched over the wood, his eyes keen for signs of the
living malice, called wraiths, or their even hungrier brothers, the
wights.
Wights. They
were bound to emerge, for one kind of monster would always beget
another. Starve a wraith for long enough so that all humanity is
eroded, its body self-consumed with its unforgiving hunger, and you
have a wight. Adam’s tight boxes wouldn’t hold them. Gravity
couldn’t hold them. They had too little substance to mind mundane
restrictions. Yet they were still not spirit, not ghost, and never
could be, because they had no soul. Only their appetites drove
them.
What Adam needed now was an old
technology, one of earth, stone, and magic. A barrow, a grave. Khan
would suggest something of the sort to Talia.
The sun was just cresting the horizon.
Below Khan, in the forest, Layla was moving with Adam toward the
remains of Khan’s first kill, the wight who’d almost had her in its
grasp. Dead now.
A sear on Khan’s skin signaled the
approach of yet another race to the field of battle, The Order,
shining bright enough to light the bare lawns near the main
building of Segue. The wraiths had come for Adam and Talia, but
Khan knew the angels were here for him.
He hung in the sky considering their
approach. The wraiths were dead or fleeing. Layla was in Adam’s
care, and yes, the angels had to be dealt with. They had the gate
in their keeping. Eventually they would have to ask its maker how
it might be destroyed.
After their first failed attempt, he’d
been expecting them.
He left the wood, stretched across the
sky, and gathered himself before the five angels who were situated
on the dried lawn in a V, as if they were geese flying south for
the winter. Custo stood in the ranks, coolly meeting Khan’s gaze,
even as Shadow roiled in the boy’s eyes.
Khan did not concern himself with his
appearance, as he did with Layla; they all knew who he was.
Whatever their individual conceptions of Death, how they conceived
the fae entity before them, Khan didn’t care. To one he was
evil-eyed, skeletal. To another, a dark, horned thing. To Custo, he
was an echo of Kathleen’s Shadowman, but harsher, more vicious, yet
still a man.
The angels’ combined presence scorched
him, but he stood fast as his skin flecked, blackened, sloughed
into darkness, then repaired itself again. In mortality, however
monstrous the form, pain accompanied the burn, but he preferred it
that way. It was something physical, earthly, to feel, and thus
brought him closer to Layla.
The angel at the head of the V was
yellow blond, with pale blue eyes, and slightly pink, fair skin. “I
am Ballard,” he said. It was an old Norse name, meaning “strong.”
“By now you know that we can destroy the hellgate you
created.”
Quiet, somber conviction filled the air
around the host—so they hadn’t come to ask
him anything; they’d come to state their intent.
Khan guessed what that was.
“No.”
“Doing so,” Ballard continued, “will
take the life of Layla Mathews, a life we know to already be at its
end.”
“No,” Khan repeated, with greater
force. He should never have let Custo take the gate in the first
place. “You cannot. Such an act would be—”
Ballard held up a hand. “We would
certainly do everything in our power to mitigate the pain she’d
have to endure. None of us want to cause harm, but we know that
nature, in due course, will eventually take her life.”
Not if Khan could help it. Not today,
or tomorrow, or the day after that. They’d just found each
other.
When the sun rose this morning, Khan
had thought he’d soon fight a devil. It was a fight he could win
without difficulty. In the mortal world, the devil might be
stronger, faster, more vicious than humans, but it was still
mortal and Khan was not.
His Shadow burned, his cloak whipping
with his fury.
But never did Khan think he would have
to fight the angels. In fact, via Custo he thought he’d found a
reluctant peace with them. But if they sought to harm Layla, they
sought war. Khan himself would strike the first blow.
“Think a moment,” Ballard continued.
“Consider the alternative, the worst possible. She is bound to the
gate, that much we know. To destroy the gate, she also must be
destroyed. What if the only way to destroy
the gate is to take the life that is bound to it? And what if she
should die a random death, her fate bearing down on her, and our
opportunity is lost? Should she die and the gate remain, it may
never be able to be destroyed. We cannot risk that eventuality. We
cannot suffer such a thing to exist on Earth. And let us not
forget, she should be dead already. So we return to our first
course of action: destroy the gate, regrettably killing Layla in
the process. It is the only solution, and after great deliberation,
Custo Santovari has agreed to take on this burden, as he was the
one to give you the hammer in the first place.”
“You speak of murder.” Khan looked at
Custo, who looked back, steady and sure.
“The devil that escaped Hell has
already murdered nine people,” Ballard returned. “You should have
told us you opened the gate.”
Khan hadn’t opened it, but he wouldn’t
inform the angels and give them another reason to harm
Layla.
War, then.
He reached long for Shadow and found it
plentiful in the break-of-dawn filter of trees. Always at the brink
of change was Shadow, ready and available. He’d need it all to
fight the angels. And if they died and lost their souls, he would
not care. He could teach them evil and darkness the likes of which
no devil could contemplate. If the angels harmed Layla, he would do
just that.
Ballard lifted a hand. “Hold a moment,
before you strike us down.”
A black mist rolled across the grass,
hissing as it met the shins of the angels. Khan would drown them in
it while Shadow strengthened him. No angel was as old and canny as
Death. No angel, even of Valhalla, could defeat the Grim Reaper in
battle. Without Layla, he would become all his names, marshal the
fae and knock down all the walls, all gates.
The angels stood fast, as was their
nature.
In the midst of the gathering darkness,
Ballard cocked his head thoughtfully. “Do you know how rare it is
that the same soul is permitted two lives in
mortality?”
Khan gave a fierce grin. His Kathleen,
his Layla, could do anything she put her will to. That’s how
magnificent she was. And these emissaries of Heaven wanted to kill
her?
“And to be reborn in a space of time so
near to the last is . . . well, it’s nothing short of miraculous.
As far as The Order knows, it’s never been done, and we maintain
excellent records.”
Shadow darkened Khan’s vision. He was
filled with it, gorging in preparation.
“We believe she had to have a divine
purpose in order to come back to Earth. She had to have some great
work that only she could do to be permitted this second
chance.”
“Layla came back for her child. Our
child.”
Ballard frowned. “Over the millennia
there have been countless mothers who have longed for their
children with equal desperation. All of them had to wait. Kathleen,
we believe, was no different in that regard.”
Kathleen was different in every regard,
but Khan’s attention was caught. “Then what?”
“We have no idea.” Ballard shrugged and
smiled in spite of the darkness grasping up his legs, his imminent
demise. “These are momentous times, and she was there, with you,
when all things changed. So, while it would be prudent to take
immediate action with the gate, we will wait and watch with great
interest.”
Khan stilled, the Shadow rippling with
his surprise. “You will not harm her?”
Ballard nodded. “Layla is on borrowed
time already. I wish her Godspeed with whatever it is she’s
supposed to do.”
Never had Khan known an angel to lie,
yet he was loath to believe this turnabout. But if Ballard spoke
true, then for now, Layla was spared.
She was spared.
The Shadow on the earth
thinned.
“There remains, however, the problem of
the gate and the escaped devil. The Order has some small hope that
you, as the creator, can dismantle it without harming Layla. At the
very least, we’d like you to try in the event she should suddenly
pass and the world be left with a gate to Hell and a devil run
amuck.”
Khan could not leave her, not with such
precious little time they had left together, not with a devil
headed to Segue, and Layla’s life in the balance. Not with the
wraiths and wights bearing down. Not now that he’d known the lost,
abandoned child she’d been. “No.”
Ballard’s jaw flexed at the refusal.
“You misunderstand me,” he said. “We are running out of options. We
want to give Layla the time she needs, but we will act on our own
if we must. In either case, the gate to Hell cannot remain on
Earth.”
Again that conviction pouring out of
them. Shadow still seethed across the winter frigid Earth, but they
paid it no mind. They were all ready to die.
“Please try,” Custo said. “I do not
like the alternative.”
“As ever, you are a murderer,” Khan cut
back.
“Shadowman!” It was a new voice,
Talia’s.
Khan bent his head in the direction of
his daughter, who was pushing a stroller across the grass, the
babes within bundled for a morning walk. Her arrival was so
convenient, it smacked of prearrangement.
“This is not your concern, Talia,” Khan
said.
“The hell it isn’t. I lost her, too.”
His daughter’s face was pale, eyes sad. She’d heard everything: the
gate; the devil; Layla’s life, now at its end.
“This morning wraiths were falling from
the trees,” Shadowman said, “and you expect me to leave her
here?”
“Is it safe for my
children?”
Nowhere was safe for those
children.
Talia’s gaze grew hot. “Besides, I’d
like a little time with her myself. And if this gate business is as
hellish as I’ve been told, then you need to
destroy it. It’s your responsibility.”
So indeed her presence here this
morning was not a coincidence. It was part of The Order’s design
for his compliance. Clever.
“Please don’t let Layla’s life become
connected to such a legacy of pain and fear,” she
said.
“Her life is already at its end, and
you ask me to give her up again?”
“Not give her up. Never that.” Talia
stepped forward. “We’ll keep her safe for you. The devil is mortal,
so Segue security has a good chance of keeping it
out.”
By nature, the fae did not age, but
Khan felt himself grow old. “A wight nearly
had her just moments ago, and they are not mortal.”
Ballard’s interest sharpened. “A draug?
Are the wraiths so far along then?”
“Yes, yet another reason why I am
needed here.”
Talia put her body in front of her
children. Her eyes went dark as she, too, drew from Twilight for
strength. Between clenched teeth, she asked, “What’s a wight or a
draug?”
“Wight and draug are the same, old in
the history of the world,” Ballard said. “It is a night creature, a
wraith starved into an insubstantial corporeal form, so the Earth’s
gravity does not hold it. They are hungry to feed, but lacking all
human mores and intelligence.”
“They cannot be caged either,” Khan
said. “Adam needs to begin digging barrows,
or graves. Wights can only be trapped in the earth, as if they are
buried.”
“You are safe enough during the day.”
Ballard looked away from Talia, dismissing her.
“And I’ll be here at night,” Khan
finished.
Ballard shook his head. “Not good
enough. Every second the gate remains on Earth, mortality is in
grave danger.”
“Mortality depends on Segue, too,”
Custo said. “Shadowman’s solution makes sense.”
“Do not think to speak for me, boy,”
Khan said.
Ballard inclined his head to Custo.
“You forfeited your voice in this matter when you gave Shadowman
the hammer.”
“I like it, too,” Talia interrupted,
nodding, her breath coming hard with her relief. “Khan with you
during the day, here at night.”
“The irony,” Ballard said to Khan, “is
that you should be about your duty in Twilight, ushering the dead.
No. I will not haggle the terms of your cooperation. You will come,
now, and see to the gate, or we will see to the gate
ourselves.”
Khan smiled, the plain of Shadow going
utterly still. “You misunderstand
me. Death does not haggle. Does not bargain.
Does not bow. Harm Layla, and the devils and wights will be the
least of your concerns.”
Silence reigned over the
parley.
Then Ballard’s face flushed red to
match his anger, but his expression was stone. “For the good of
man, I concede.”
“Women, too, I hope,” Talia
murmured.
Khan glanced over at the rising sun,
yellow bright. The wraiths were gone; Layla was safe for the
moment. Time was short. “I’m ready now.”
Layla was about to take a seat in the
jeep when soldier-man Kev jerked her back.
“Black widow,” he said and swatted a
big, black, and venomous spider. Once, twice, three times before it
curled up its extralong legs and died.
Her time to die? Forget that. But
Layla’s heart was thumping. The forest bramble gave way to bumpy
grass, which climbed to a single-lane access road. Kev took the
road at a good clip, and when he broke into the valley, she spotted
the castle of Segue.
The sunlight was behind her now, the
sky pale blue, yet the building was only partially illuminated. The
Escher effect again. Inky darkness crawled up the west wing so that
not even the windows reflected the morning. The other part of the
building looked solid, lightening with the rising sun.
The sight tugged at her mind, as it had
that day when she’d come to snap a photo of Talia Thorne. Something
was off about the building. Something wrong, dangerous. It made her
feel as if she were small and exposed while a massive, violent
storm hung on the horizon, but on a horizon line that Layla did not
understand.
This was exactly what she’d been
talking about with Talia.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she
concentrated on relaxing. On breathing.
All her life she’d fought these kinds
of visions. She’d pushed them into the back of her mind and had
gotten along just fine. Well, mostly fine. She paid her rent. Got
an education. And she had a story to report. If she focused on
that, the fever in her heart would quiet.
She opened her eyes and the shadow on
the building pulsed. Grasped.
Which made Layla gulp hard. Somewhere
inside that building, Talia was playing with her
children.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Mathews,” Kev said.
“We’re almost there.”
She should tell them, just in case.
These people dealt with scary crap every day—angels and fae and
Shadow and who knew what else. They might even already know the
darkness was there and weren’t worried about it. After all, Khan
used Shadow for his magic, and what was that
thing on Segue but a great big shadow?
Or maybe . . . She might not be able to
paint like Kathleen, but she had the same ability to see. And once in a while she could capture what she saw
on film.
Dr. Patel, a couple of male nurses, and
a stretcher were waiting for her at the rear of the building. A
massive loading dock was open for their convenience, and Kev
stopped there.
She shuffled out of the jeep on her
own.
“I’m not getting on that thing,” Layla
said, as she passed the stretcher. She left Patel no choice but to
lead her through the underfloors of Segue to wherever he was going
to look at her calf, which stung fiercely, but was in no way
life-threatening. Though the ceilings were low, the corridors were
modern, sleek, and white, a startling counterpoint to the
restoration on the main floors. Offices and lab space were off to
each side. They went through sliding doors to a small
clinic.
Zoe was waiting there, irritation
communicated in every tense muscle of her body. She pointedly
ignored Layla with a hostile drag of her gaze to Patel. “I thought
you were coming up.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, professional
despite her demanding tone. “We had an emergency.”
Zoe jacked a thumb Layla’s way.
“Her?”
“Yes, and I’ll need to take a look at
Ms. Mathews’s injuries before I can see Abigail.” Dr. Patel
gestured to a screen partition. Layla assumed an examination table
was on the other side. “In the meantime, I can send one of the
nurses.”
“I don’t want a nurse. I want you.
Right now,” Zoe said. “And you’re wasting your time with
Ms. Mathews. She’s going to die anyway.
Abigail’s seen it.”
Which was the last straw. Zoe was mean,
but Layla suddenly felt a whole lot meaner. “I’m not going to die.
Not now, not ever. Got it?”
Took a sec for the “not ever” to sound
stupid.
Zoe was already laughing in her face.
“There are forces at work here that you can’t even imagine.” To Dr.
Patel she said, “Look. Abigail can’t keep anything down. It’s been
twenty-four hours. Twenty-four and a half with”—Zoe tilted her head
toward Layla—“her drama.”
“Ms. Mathews, if you will please . .
.”
My drama? Layla
had just dodged death for the fifth time in twenty-four hours. And
apparently, she was destined to die any second now. A little drama
was warranted. And as for forces beyond her imagination, if someone
would loan her a camera, she’d show them something that would make
them squeak but good.
“I’ll be up shortly,” Dr. Patel
repeated to Zoe, pulling the screen open.
Sure enough, a stainless steel table
waited. Layla used her arms to lift herself up, then scooted to lie
on her side. Her scratches did not need this much
attention.
The clinic door whisked open, and Talia
walked in, her gaze dark with worry. “What happened?”
“Oh, shit,” Zoe said, “if it isn’t
Princess Die.”
“Nice to see you, too,
Zoe.”
“Abigail is starving and your Dr. Patel is bent on looking at Ms.
Mathews’s boo-boo.”
Dr. Patel was unwrapping Layla’s field
dressing, murmuring, “Not bad at all.”
“Zoe,” Talia said, “will you please
wait outside?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Talia took a deep breath, for strength,
Layla guessed. “I’m not asking.”
That’s when Layla noticed that Zoe was
shaking, her gaze filling with resentment as she looked at Talia.
“You did this to Abigail. Made her sick. Made her use Shadow. She
wouldn’t be this bad off if it weren’t for you. Abigail saved your
life, and you’re letting her go hungry.”
“She has the absolute best care. We’ve
done and are doing everything possible for her. Every recourse has
been taken. You know this is true, because you’ve been by her side
the whole time,” Talia answered. “Dr. Patel will be up shortly.
Sooner, if you leave now and let us take care of
Layla.”
With a slap, Zoe upended a tray of
tools, which clattered to the floor. She glared her anger at them,
burning Talia the longest.
Nobody moved, though Layla almost
opened her mouth to tell the doctor to put a Band-Aid on her leg
and take care of Abigail. The pain emanating from Zoe was
palpable.
“This won’t take but a few minutes,”
Dr. Patel assured her.
Zoe stuck up her chin and stalked out,
her hands fisted at her sides.
The door hadn’t slid shut when Talia
rounded on the doctor. “How bad is Layla?”
Dr. Patel cleared his voice. “She’s got
an ugly scrape, that’s all. I’ll keep an eye on her, just in case.
Adam seemed inordinately concerned when he called about it as
well.”
Probably because she was supposed to
die any minute now.
Layla felt the moment Talia finally
settled her gaze on her, and she was immediately filled with a
pressing, bright warmth. It was a mixed-up feeling, so sharp and
sweet as to be near pain.
And Khan? Where was he?
“I promised my father that we’d keep
you alive,” Talia said. “Don’t make a liar out of me.”
“I’m not dying,” Layla
said.
“Ever,” Patel added,
deadpan.
“Well, that’s good news,” Talia said,
grinning.
Layla forced her gaze back on the
table. She concentrated on the microstriations in the metal to get
her mind off the pressure in her heart. Reincarnation. A family.
After all these years.
And somehow too late.
“But I still plan to keep you inside
and out of harm’s way for the rest of the day,” Talia
said.
So Talia knew, too. Damn Khan. It
seemed he’d filled everyone in, but her.
“You could meet the kids—” Talia’s
voice broke. “If you want, I mean.”
Talia Thorne’s children. Her little
boys. The shadow hanging over Segue.
The fullness in Layla’s chest turned
painful, cutting off all her air so that the beat of her heart
drummed loud in her head.
A baby smell sweetened the clinic’s
air. It was a mother smell, too. She concentrated on the pain of
her scrapes, let it burn, burn, burn, so she wouldn’t embarrass
herself. If they were trying to wreck her, completely demolish her,
they were doing a fantastic job. Meet the kids, but sorry, any time
now you’re going to die.
“Or not,” Talia said. “That’s okay,
too.”
But Layla could hear the hurt in
Talia’s voice.
Layla’s face heated. Her eyes and nose
pricked, ready to embarrass her. Damn it. The pressure in her chest
was going to kill her if she didn’t do something.
With a cough, she cleared the thickness
blocking her voice. “No, really, I’d love to meet them. That would
be . . . just . . . great. And then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to
borrow a camera.”