Chapter 14
Layla sat on the sofa in her apartment,
arms crossed, elbows braced on her knees. She breathed deep so she
wouldn’t be sick all over the nice rug, but each inhalation just
fed the internal fire scorching her chest. Denying the message in
her head was impossible, but coping with it now that she had found
her place in the world was beyond excruciating. It was burning her
from the inside out.
Talia was using the bedroom as a
makeshift nursery since her apartment had been battered and soiled
by dead wraiths. She stood frozen in the doorway, as if on guard, a
baby bottle in her hands. Adam paced on the other side of the room
in front of the windows. Custo straddled a turned-around
straight-backed chair. And Shadowman glared from the seat across
from Layla. At least he’d managed to put on some
clothes.
Adam stopped abruptly. “Aside from the
scythe issue, what exactly did you remember?”
Layla concentrated on the crisscross
grain of the upholstery of Shadowman’s chair. She hadn’t looked at
him directly since delivering her message. Hurt too much. “That the
existence of the wraiths is our fault. That souls are being lost to
Shadow as fae prey on them when they cross. That he has to go back
and restore The Order by lifting his scythe.”
“But nothing of what we shared?”
Shadowman put in.
She shook her head no. And she didn’t
want to. What she already felt for him was strong
enough.
The wraith thing was beyond ironic.
Here she’d spent years of her life trying to learn the origin of
the wraiths when it had been she and Shadowman all along. Had that
compulsion, that obsession, come from her, or had it been part of
her reincarnation directive as well? Layla bet it was the
latter.
“First of all,” Talia said angrily,
“you aren’t responsible for the wraiths. Yes, when Shadowman
crossed to be with my mother, a fae demon got into the world, The
Death Collector. I killed him, so in that case we’ve cleaned up our
own mess. But the wraiths? Do you know what each person had to do
to become one? They had to drink a cup of demon vomit. They had to
choose it. Becoming a wraith was a deliberate, voluntary act, not
some condition spread like a disease. And we’re still fighting
them. We’ve dedicated our lives and our resources to that end. So
that blame is in no way yours to bear.”
Shadowman was silent through Talia’s
tirade, the weight of his gaze heavy on Layla’s near-crumbling
defenses.
Apparently the wraiths had colluded
with Rose Petty, a dangerous combination that still sent shivers
down Layla’s back. With Rose’s ability to manipulate minds, and
wights taking to the air, the wraiths had gotten into the main
building. Into Talia and Adam’s apartment. Into the
nursery.
They must want Talia’s children
bad.
“Doesn’t matter if they chose it or
not. The wraiths, a devil, that horrible gate,” Layla listed. She
forced herself to meet Shadowman’s gaze. He had to understand.
“We’ve been hell on the world and it’s time it
stopped.”
“Layla,” Adam said, “the problem is
more complex than Khan returning to Shadow.”
“No, it’s not. It’s very simple. Very
clear.” It rang like a bell in her mind, a horrible clanging that
she couldn’t silence. It was only marginally better than the
hellgate’s rattle. Both were the sound of doom.
“If Khan goes back,” Adam continued,
“what will happen to the gate?”
“The angels will rip it apart,” Khan
answered, each syllable clipped.
He had to be using Shadow; Layla felt
it on her skin, moving against her, stroking and churning like an
ocean. Even now he tried to seduce her. It would be so easy to give
in and let his cool fury douse the burn inside her.
“I’m sorry to be explicit, Layla,” Adam
said, “but I have to get this straight. My understanding is that if
the gate is destroyed, then you will be killed as
well.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that,
so she kept quiet. The important thing was that Shadowman went back
to his duty. Her life was over, anyway. That fact was abundantly
evident in the multiple near-death scrapes of the past couple days.
The sooner this was resolved, the sooner the nightmare would
end.
“Custo,” Talia pleaded.
“Please.”
Custo stood and turned his chair back
around. “It’s extremely rare for someone to be reincarnated. In
every case I know of, there has been some great work to be done.
The second life itself hardly mattered. Case in point, Layla was
born an orphan. I defy you to find the birth mother. Layla never
connected with any of her foster families, was wholly raised by a
system, and moved through this world almost completely
alone.”
“It’s cruel,” Talia said, eyes
shimmering.
No, Layla thought, she was on a
mission; she just hadn’t known it. She’d already had a chance at
life, and a good one, as Kathleen. This was about finishing
Kathleen’s business, Layla’s business now. The reality sucked, but
there was no changing it.
Adam picked up where Custo left off.
“Makes sense. Her work has been dominated by the wraiths and an
obsession with Segue. And, she went to extraordinary lengths to get
near Talia.”
“Why wasn’t she sent back as an angel,
then?” Talia asked.
Layla knew, but Shadowman answered. “We
wouldn’t have been able to touch.”
Angels and fae were at odds, the light
of the first eroding the darkness of the other, which was why Custo
kept well back from Shadowman.
Layla’s face heated as cool Shadow
curled around her in an embrace, caressing her skin and quickening
her blood. Sensuous zings ran down her tightening middle to torture
her when she had no hope of release. Yes, if she had a choice to
come back as an angel, full of knowledge, but not able to be with
him, or as a mortal, ignorant and scared, she’d choose mortal every
time.
“Kathleen had to have agreed to this
business,” Shadowman said cruelly, even as he reached out to Layla.
His black gaze wouldn’t let her move. “She chose her
fate.”
Which made Layla tip up her chin and
push back her shoulders. He had a right to act like a cold bastard.
She was asking the worst and betraying him, too.
“What I don’t get,” Talia said, “is why
Khan can’t choose his fate. He’s been Death
for forever. Now it’s time for someone else to step up. Then he
could watch over Layla.”
“Angels have been stepping up,” Custo
said. “But they can’t cover all of the Shadowlands—the place is
endless. And they can’t sense a passing and catch it at the brink.
Souls have been lost, and they need to be recovered. Khan is the
only one who can do that. His absence is a growing
problem.”
Shadowman smoldered in his darkness.
“He’s saying I don’t have a choice.”
“But you do,” Layla answered. “You made
one choice already. I’m asking you to make the other one. The idea
that some lost soul in Twilight is fading while you and I are off
doing who knows what . . . It’s obscene.”
“No, Layla,” Custo interrupted. “You
have that wrong, too.”
She gave him a look that dared him to
prove otherwise.
“I, as well as most of The Order,
believe your union with Shadowman was necessary. Because of the two
of you, magic has once again come into the world. Art and
innovation are in a modern renaissance. The influx brings good and
bad, yes, but both are absolutely vital to the well-being of
humanity. It was past time. We are at the brink of a new
age.”
“And the devil?” she scoffed. “I let it
into the world.”
Custo shook his head. “If the angels of
our Order have difficulty resisting the gate, it was impossible for
you to resist its pull.”
“Even I heard its call,” Shadowman
said, finally ripping his gaze from her to regard Custo. “And I am
Death.”
Layla held her breath. There. He’d said
it. He might even do what was right.
“You don’t have to worry about the
devil,” Adam said. “She’s tricky, but destroying her is a question
of firepower, which Segue can handle. Her husband, Mickey Petty, is
arriving shortly. We’ll use him to draw her out.”
That was Adam, trying to work the
problem. And everyone else, absolving her of her culpability. She
didn’t deserve it but couldn’t do anything regardless.
“Which leaves the gate,” Custo said. “I
have to warn you: The Order won’t let you pass into Twilight with
Shadowman before we attempt to destroy it. If you die before it is
destroyed, then it may never be destroyed. Eventually, someone else
will be compelled to open it.”
The Shadow on her skin turned
rough.
“You can look at her,” Shadowman
interrupted, “and plan her murder?”
“You’ve made no progress,” Custo
argued, his mouth drawn into a bitter line. “The devil just took
more lives. The Order is going to act, and soon.”
“Enough!” Shadowman said, standing. He
loomed over her, a dark shadow splitting the room. Darkness smudged
out from his skin into smoky wisps in the air. “This talk is
futile. I won’t comply. Layla, you will come with me, and we will
be happy.”
This just wasn’t going to be a happy
day.
Layla stood slowly. It hurt to move
with the fire inside and the bell in her head. She was more than a
foot shorter than he, but she wasn’t scared. Of course he would
fight this. He would fight and fight until she gave him no other
choice. Her throat was already raw from containing her own screams
of denial. She tried for a little lightheartedness. “I warned you
about the imperious thing.”
“I can’t lose you again,” he said. His
voice had lost all human tone, rumbling low, from a deep storm
within him.
She reached to brush his cheek, so
beautiful, so severe. “That part you can’t control.”
“Watch me. I won’t let you
go.”
“You will, or I’ll fade like all the
rest.”
“Not if I can keep you
alive.”
“Don’t you understand?” Layla said.
“This is my destiny.”
Layla saw Talia duck into the bedroom,
but the soft cries from within came from the mother, not a child.
The fire in Layla’s chest flared. The sooner this was over, the
better.
She turned to Custo. “I’ll want the
rest of the day to be miserable, if that’s okay with
you.”
“Layla, I—”
“Custo, it’s fine. I’m fine. At last
things make sense, which is a huge relief.” And here she’d found
Talia, a friend, after all this time. Adam should go to her. Why
was he still here in this awful room?
Custo frowned. “That’s not what you’re
thinking. At least don’t lie to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” Layla
snapped. “The bell in my head says this is no-win. I get it. At
least let me put on a good face while I try to do the right
thing.”
Shadowman sent his darkness coursing
around her. “I won’t let this happen.”
Brick wall, and her head was already
bloody.
Shadowman pulled her into his arms. “I
could keep you safe.”
Layla felt a strange stirring of air,
and then she was struck by an invisible fist. She cried out, then
bit her lip too late for quiet. The sound of metal against metal
rang throughout the room. Her weight collapsed into Shadowman’s
arms and she got a crazy vantage of the room.
“Layla?” He gripped her.
Layla marveled as the gray veins under
Custo’s skin grew darker. “Fuckers started on the gate without
me.”
Suddenly Adam was beside her. “They
knew you couldn’t do it.”
“Rose Petty took lives today,” Custo
said. “The Order won’t risk letting in more devils like
her.”
“Go!” Adam shouted. “Stop them. Buy us
more time. Tell them she’s willing.”
Another blow assailed Layla’s senses.
Stars sprang into her vision and she smelled the metallic scent of
blood, running freely from her nose. The rapid manchatter kept up
around her, but her attention was drawn to Shadowman’s face. His
eyes had gone full black again, swallowing the whites. Unless he
was turned on, that was a bad sign. His form, though solid, seemed
to phase out of reality, as if the darkness was filling him to
bursting. Very bad.
“Don’t,” she tried to tell him, but she
knew he was beyond that. Beyond listening.
This is the way it has
to be. But she could see that he didn’t care.
She trembled as a new beast was born
before her eyes. Her Shadowman, yes, but filled with a blackening
menace that outdid anything Rose could hope to
conjure.
The angels wanted Death?
Well, here he comes.
Shadowman took the cavern with a
hurricane of darkness. He drew from the depths of the earth where
shadows were soaked in black pitch and hurled death at the host
gathered before the gate to Hell. Bodies flew back and crashed on
the stone walls and the stalagmites reaching up from the
floor.
Only Ballard hung on to the gate, his
yellow hair whipping in the wind, one hand around a wrought-iron
rung, the other gripping the hammer. Though Death bore down, still
Ballard drew back and struck the gate again.
They hadn’t even given her a moment’s
warning.
Death summoned Shadow, deeper and
deeper, until the cavern walls ran with sightless bugs streaming
toward the mouth. Bats screamed through the air in a cacophonous
flapping. And the gate rattled with hysterical glee.
Shadowman sent a gale of power and
struck Ballard. His head bounced off the gate, bloodied, but he
held on.
How valiant. But angels were mortal and
this one was going to die.
Death flexed his magic and took to his
feet. He hoped they saw a beast. They deserved to meet a beast for
the murder they planned. He grabbed Ballard’s hair in his hand and
bashed his head against the gate. Used his skull like a new hammer.
Thrilled toward the moment when white bone would show
through.
But his arm was caught by that dog,
Custo. “Let me—!” The rest of his words were lost on the
wind.
Just as well. Shadowman shook off the
hold, drew Ballard back, and struck the gate again. Finally, the
damn angel’s body went slack, the hammer dropping to the cavern
floor. Death tossed the used body aside and turned to the angels,
who were regrouping for a fight.
Custo stood between them, eyes black
with Shadow, arms lifted, hands flattened to say, Stop!
The moment they struck Layla, the
angels had taken matters way past stopping.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat:
Open me. I’ve an army at your disposal.
“She’ll comply!” Custo shouted at them.
“Layla has agreed!”
“I don’t,” Shadowman’s thunderstorm
grumbled.
Another angel stepped forward. “Recuse
yourself, Custo. You are blinded by your friendships.”
“Layla just found out,” Custo said.
“She agreed. Give her a little time. . . .”
“There is no such thing as time,” Death
said. Not anymore. There was only forever. And he would have no
less.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat:
I can give you forever.
“Listen to me!” Custo shouted. “Layla
found her purpose. She can set things straight. Shadowman will go
back to Twilight.”
“I will not.” For a moment, he had
considered it. For a moment, he would have taken the heartbreak, if
that was what Layla really wanted him to do. He’d have gone back
and done his duty. Now he only wanted his scythe to strike down the
angels. His bare hands would have to do.
“Shadowman, please. Listen to reason,”
Custo said. “It’s the way things are meant to be.”
Ballard stirred from his collapse on
the ground. Put a hand to the cave floor.
Through the air, a gleam of steel flew.
A dagger, a weapon of the angels. Shadowman stuck out his chest to
accept the impact. No blade could kill him, and in the belly of the
earth where darkness reigned, it would not even slow him. The point
slid into his heart with a thunk as the hilt met muscle. He grinned
against the pain, baring his teeth at the host like an animal. He
had only to move his Shadow forward, and the dagger would fall to
the ground. And so it did.
“No bloodshed!” Custo implored him. “If
you don’t want to be Death, don’t kill today. Layla wouldn’t want
it. You know that.”
“Your kind struck her first.” And now
Shadowman could only see death around him. Could only see the
wasted bodies littering the cave. A war with Heaven. Endless
fighting until the world was scorched beyond
reckoning.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat:
Open me, and no one will strike Layla again.
Ballard pushed himself up. His nose was
crushed, one eye turned slightly inward, blood streaming down his
chin, but his body would repair itself rapidly, as angels were wont
to do. Soon he would be whole again. However, like a devil, angels
could be killed, and Death could not. Why did they fight when they
had no hope of prevailing?
“The time for discussion is past,”
Shadowman said.
“What if we bury it?” Custo said. “What
if I guard it until Layla is old and ready to go?”
The boy was grasping at
straws.
Ballard wiped the blood from his mouth
and stood. “The risk is too great, the temptation overwhelming. The
gate must be destroyed now. We do not compromise with evil or with
Shadow.”
“Let them at least prepare,” Custo
begged. “Let her say good-bye.”
“The decision is made,” Ballard
said.
“The fuck it is!” Custo shouted
back.
Shadowman bid dark magic to flow
through his veins. No one would so much as lay a finger on the
gate. “You’re right,” he said to Ballard. “The decision has been
made. Custo, it is time for you to choose a side. Order or
madness?”
Custo let his extended arms drop. His
chest rose and fell with his breath. Conviction overrode the
anguish that ripped his Shadow and Ordered halves apart. “Well,
when you put it like that . . .”
And he went to stand next to
Death.
“You’re a fool.” Ballard spit blood
onto the ground.
“This won’t end well, will it?” Custo
murmured.
“No,” Shadowman answered. “It will
not.”
“Look at me, Layla.”
She focused on Adam, who crouched in
front of her.
“You feel okay? Like the first time
this happened?”
Her head hurt like crazy, but yeah,
she’d live.
He held up a finger in front of her
eyes, tracking to the left and right. “Patel’s been evacuated, or
I’d have him give you a once-over.”
“I’m okay, and I think we can safely
say the gate still stands, too.” If she was relatively unscathed,
the gate must be. Shadowman had stopped them. She just hoped Custo
could keep the whole thing civilized. But remembering the look in
Shadowman’s face, the darkening of his skin and eyes, she really
didn’t think civilized was possible. Death was pissed.
“Was anyone else hurt in the attack?”
Layla asked.
“When the alarm went off, most were
evacuated. Some staff remain, those who were trapped in their
rooms, and the soldiers are here. We’re still well protected, just
not organized.”
Layla glanced toward Talia, who was
leaning in the bedroom doorway, the black-eyed baby in her arms.
“Will the kids be safe?”
“I’m a banshee,” Talia said. “If we’re
attacked by wraiths, my scream will bring my father. Add Adam’s
firepower and they are as safe as we can make them.”
“Banshee,” Layla repeated. She hadn’t
meant it to be out loud. So that was the deal with Talia’s
voice.
“Yes.” Talia returned her gaze, waiting
for a reaction.
“I heard you scream,” Layla said,
recalling that piercing terror. “Down in the holding
facility.”
Adam craned his neck to look at his
wife. “She did hear you, even though I couldn’t. She sent me
running.”
Layla gave a wry smile. “One of the
kids has quite the scream, too. I could hear him through Kathleen’s
painting. He makes the leaves rustle like there’s a wind blowing
through the trees. Totally confused me, but I get it now. The veil
is thin for me.” She felt the smile twist on her face. “Getting
thinner by the hour.”
“You don’t really want Khan to go back,
do you?” Talia put the baby over her shoulder and patted his back.
The other one let out an angry squall, and Adam went to fetch
him.
“For myself, no, of course not.” But
this was bigger than her. Layla shrugged. “I hate it, but I can’t
think of an alternative. And at least we can be together there for
a little while.” A very little while.
Talia shook her head. “I can’t believe
it. For you guys to find each other again, and now this? It’s worse
than wights and the devil put together.”
“Funny thing is,” Layla said as his
winter Twilight sprang to mind, “even if he does go back, I don’t
think he’ll last long. He’s too far gone.”
The desolation he faced filled her with
sorrow. The ashy ground, the barren branches, the dirty gray of his
unending existence. She’d felt the utter lack for a few moments
last night and could bear that nothingness only with his arms
around her. The pain of his abject loneliness echoed hers. It had
been in his voice, and in that lonesome howl, when she’d asked him
to reveal himself. He’d known the emptiness of the future, and the
monster it would surely make of him.
Layla wept for her love, for his duty,
and for his ruin.
“What do you mean?” Talia asked, both
urgency and sadness in her voice.
Layla wiped at the tears that coursed
down her cheeks. She lifted a helpless hand. “Maybe twenty-some
years ago there might have been a chance, but not now.” Layla’s
throat contracted at the thought of him trapped in his solitude.
How long would it take to resolve things with the gate? Before she
could hold him? Would he bend, or would he fight? Fight. “I think
it would kill the good in him and leave the dark. And then
what?”
She remembered the look on his face
when he’d held her in his arms, the insane rage, backed by the
might of his magic. It was more frightening than the beast who had
stared Rose down before he’d changed into Shadowman before Layla’s
eyes.
“I’m supposed to convince him,” Layla
said.
“I wish I could help.” Worry lines
formed on Talia’s forehead. “But I don’t know how or what to
do.”
“No, you’ve got the kids.”
A chattery hiss rose in the room, like
the sound of a downpour on a tin roof or nighttime bug talk in the
middle of a jungle. Segue was exposed to neither of those
conditions, so Layla stood, a now too familiar tightness pulling in
her chest.
“Abby?” she heard from far, far away,
but she didn’t recognize the voice. It was young and broken and
afraid. “Don’t leave me, sis.”
Oh, no. Fresh alarm stirred Layla’s
misery to panic. Not Abigail. Not now.
The wraith attack had precipitated
something else, too. Everything was coming all at once, with no
time to mourn or say good-bye. All the stolen time was
spent.
The living room seemed to warp
slightly, and Layla remembered the Shadow over Segue, the twisting
lines of the building’s architecture. In the rush and danger of the
past few hours, she hadn’t had a chance to ask Khan, now Shadowman,
what it was. And now she didn’t need to. She
knew.
The Shadow was here for Abigail. Zoe’s
sister was passing. The reason Layla knew this was simple: Soon she
would pass, too, even though she had—finally had—people who would
try to hang on to her with all their might. This crossing was
inevitable, for Abigail and for her.
Order was asserting itself
everywhere.
Layla turned to Talia, who moved
strangely slow-fast forward, her mouth shaping words, though the
sound was unintelligible. Her face had that fae glow to it again,
the tilt of her eyes a touch more extreme.
Abigail was putting Segue, and everyone
remaining within it, at the brink, too.
“Scream,” Layla said. She meant to
shout it.
Color in the room suddenly amped, and
finally—finally—Talia whirled back to Adam,
a look of alarm transforming the concern on her
features.
And with a crashing rush like the ocean
on rocks, Layla could hear again.
Adam opened a drawer and pulled out a
handgun. “Where is it?”
He was looking for a wraith or a wight.
Layla was shaking her head. “Shadow’s coming. An ocean of it.
Scream!”
“Won’t help,” Talia was saying, holding
her baby fast to her shoulder. “Have to be in the presence of the
living dead, like a wraith, for my father to hear. But if it’s
Shadow, we should be okay. I’ll keep us safe.”
“This isn’t just Shadow. It’s freaking
Twilight.” Where was a wraith when you
needed one?
A tsunami of great force was coming.
Layla’s bones trembled with the gather of its force. Colors bled
into others, luscious in hue and wicked in severity.
“What do I do?” Adam’s face flushed
red, veins popping. The child in his arms screamed in confusion,
but the one in Talia’s laughed.
“Abigail’s passing.” Layla’s heart
clutched at Zoe’s racking sobs amid the deafening roar of magic. If
Talia and the babies were overcome by it, they’d be lost to the
world, too. Oh, God. “Run!”
Layla got to the apartment door, which
burst open, blasted by magic, to reveal the hallway. She held it
wide for Adam and Talia to pass as dried fall leaves in storybook
gold cartwheeled down the corridor. The smell in the air was all
promises, exotic and heady, making her thinking fuzz. Again, it
occurred to Layla how Segue hovered on the intersection of this
world and the next, the present and the past, fantasy and the ruin
of the world.
“Looks normal,” Talia said, though
stricken with worry.
There was no time to convince them.
Layla grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out into the hall.
Pushed her toward the elevators. “You’ve got to get out, or it will
take you and the kids, too.”
Adam was finally spurred to action. He
jogged down the hallway. Layla chased, put a hand on his back to
make him run. The hallway stretched and torqued, but Adam and Talia
seemed oblivious. They went along on only her warning.
Whispering voices, sweet sounding,
begged Layla to wait, to stay, to linger. She slowed, looking back
toward the dark swirl of Shadow. Behind the vortex, she knew
there’d be trees.
Now, finally, Talia looked back in
horrified awe.
“Talia!” Adam shouted. He was at the
stairs, holding the door with his body. The stairwell was a howling
abyss, the steps a vertical careen downward. The only way
out.
And far away Layla heard Zoe’s cries,
now muffled, as if she buried her face in her hands. One sister,
hanging on to the other.
Something about it was familiar, too
familiar, and since Layla had no siblings, it had to come from her
before-life when a sister made the same soul-scoring sound. The
pain stopped her in her tracks.
Adam had his wife around the waist.
“Layla, come on!”
But she couldn’t leave Zoe behind. That
sound, a gut wail of grief, had anchored her. One last thing to
do.
And besides, it was time for her to
cross, too. Everyone, including Shadowman, knew it. She looked in
the direction of the west wing. A bad little girl haunted that
place, but Layla really didn’t care.
She didn’t want to force Shadowman’s
hand, but the time for choosing was past.
“Get out of here,” Layla said, glancing
back at Talia. Beautiful Talia. “I’m going after Zoe.”
“You won’t be able to come back,” Talia
said, the awful knowledge in her gaze.
“I know what I’m doing,” Layla
answered. She hoped her eyes communicated as much—especially the
“I’m so glad I got to meet you” that was bursting her heart. “And
I’m not supposed to come back.”
Shadowman would just have to come after
her. He wouldn’t leave her to go mad. He’d pick up his scythe.
Maybe this was the way it was always meant to be.
Zoe’s sobs choked off, there was
nothing for a moment, and then she screamed. Terror.
And Layla was off at a
run.