Shadow City (4 page)

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.

“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.

Alexander tensed, his Blade peeling back the bars of its cage and lunging forth. Tyler fell back a step, but his own Blade was rising to the killing edge. He needed a Prime to keep him steady. Niko stepped between them.

“Enough,” he said, his back to Tyler as he watched Alexander carefully. He dipped his gaze to seem less challenging. “Maybe you have a good reason to be so sure that stepping up to Prime will mean that Max won’t come back. If so, I’d like to hear it. Nobody wants to push you if it means losing her forever.”

Alexander opened his mouth. Words jumbled in his throat, but nothing made sense. He spun away, staring at the boiling column of smoke, trying to think. But all he could think of was this was something he could
do
to get Max back. And if Niko was right, he had no choice.

“All right. I will do it,” he said a minute later. He would rather regret doing something than regret doing nothing. He swung back around. “But if you are wrong, I will make you hurt more than you ever dreamed you could, and then I will kill you.”

“It’s a deal,” Niko said. He reached out a bloody hand, and Alexander shook it slowly. “Let’s go tell Giselle about it.” He glanced at the billowing column of oily, trapped smoke. “And that.”

Tyler dusted himself off, his beast settling down. “She’s going to love this. Not to mention Oz. He’s going to have kittens.”

“None of his concern, now, is it?” Niko said with a shrug. “His job is to look after the Sunspears. This is Shadowblade business. If he doesn’t like it, he can bite my ass.”

“Or kick it up to your ears,” Tyler pointed out.

“Let him try,” Alexander said softly. “No one fucks with my Blades without answering to me.”

His two companions looked at each other, then at him. “You sound like Max,” Tyler said. The muscles of his jaw jumped with suppressed emotion.

“Not as easy on the eyes, though,” Niko said.

“I’ll remember to tell her you said that,” Tyler said. “When she comes back.”

If she comes back,
Alexander thought darkly. But hope continued to grow despite himself.
Damn her.
Where the hell was she?

M
AX HIT THE GROUND AND FELT HER RIBS BREAK
. Again. Her breath exploded, and she sucked in air, coughing as fire circled her ribs and sand filled her throat.

She rolled onto her back with a groan, spitting grit as she tried not to breathe. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. Instead, she made herself get up.

She put her hand down to help shove herself to her feet and fell onto her shoulder as her arm gave way. She sat up again, scowling down at it. No fucking wonder.

Splintered bone poked through the skin of her forearm, and two of her fingers were pointing in unnatural directions. The pain of her wounds was almost negligible. Which meant that either she was getting used to it, or her nerve receptors had gotten bored with the repeated torture she’d been inflicting on herself and had gone off to find something better to do. Like go to Jamaica, maybe.

She sighed and shook her hand to straighten things out, making a face as the ends of her bones ground together.
Disgusting.
It would only take a few minutes to heal back up—the perks of being a Shadowblade. Though maybe her body would get bored with that, too. Just at the moment, she wouldn’t mind dying.

“Are you ready?”

“Mind if I take a second or two to heal up before you try to kill me again?”

Scooter did not answer for a whole ten seconds. “Now?”

Fuck.
He was worse than a four-year-old. Add in the fact that he was at least part god, and she’d better get her shit together quick, because he was going to start in again whether she was ready or not.

“You do realize that the definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different outcome, right?”

Max heaved herself up, staggering in the deep sand before facing him.

Scooter was sitting cross-legged on a flat tree stump. As if any tree had ever lived this far underground. But this was his house, and he got to decorate it the way he wanted, underground tree stumps and all. Maybe she should try to talk him into bringing in a load of feather beds for a softer landing. Of course, he’d probably say that would only encourage her to fail. The bastard.

He was beautiful in an austere, otherworldly way. He was also scary as hell. He could kill her without even twitching an eyebrow.

His skin was copper brown, and his black hair hung straight to his waist. His eyes were obsidian from corner to corner, except for flecks of drifting blue light. He rippled with muscle, his face square and blunt-featured. He wore only a pair of buckskin pants. Magic thickened the air around him, making it hard to breathe.

“There is no other way,” he said. “You will learn or die.”

“Death is beginning to look better and better.”

He didn’t crack a smile. “Time is short.”

Time is short for what?
Max bit down on the question before it could get away. He hadn’t answered it the first hundred times she’d asked, so why would he start now? Nor did she snidely point out that he was the one with the countdown watch; she had all the time in the world. Except she didn’t. Not if she ever wanted to go home. Instead, she yawned widely and twisted to crack her spine. “Let’s get on with it. I’m starting to miss all that tasty pain.”

He made no motion, nothing to warn her. But suddenly, she jerked backward, propelled through the air like a rocket. Her body tensed, and she felt the magic from the angel feather embedded in her hand pull against the force of Scooter’s magic. She slowed fractionally. Her mind whirled. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to imagine a door. It was easier to do this time. Practice makes perfect. She reached out to open it. Before her mental fingers could close on the knob, she slammed against the rock wall. Bones snapped, and her lungs burst like overripe fruit. Her head cracked against the knobby stone, and she went blind.

The next thing she knew, she was falling. Her head spun, and she couldn’t breathe. She felt herself slowing as the power of the angel feather embedded in her hand took hold. She clenched her fist around it, more from habit than intent. Her mind was fragmented, like loose pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Coherence was impossible. Still, she tried to pull back on the feather’s magic. She needed to fall.

According to Scooter, most people found the door to the abyss between worlds accidentally when they tripped over the threshold of life and death. He wanted Max to find the door so that they could travel together. She had no idea where or why or for how long. He wasn’t saying. As for the door, she wasn’t at all clear about why he just didn’t open it for her. With all his power, he was perfectly capable. But he said she had to do it herself, and since she had no choice, she agreed. So, he was doing his best to bring her to the brink of death. A couple of times, she’d thought she’d gone over the edge, but he’d brought her back. It’s good to be a god. If only he had a better way of showing her the path into the abyss. Apparently, he wasn’t omnipotent. Too bad for her.

Suddenly, time seemed to stop. For a split second, Max could feel every artery, vein, and capillary in her body. Each cell seemed lined in diamond fire. She caught her breath—slow, so very slow—pain igniting as fiery needles pierced her healing lungs. She thrust it away impatiently. She needed to think.

Other pain gnawed at her. It caught her head in a steel bear trap. A searing ache wrapped her ribs, and her tongue throbbed where she’d bitten into it. She tasted the coppery flavor of her blood, and her stomach lurched. For once, she could neither ignore the hurt nor draw strength from it. Her mind wouldn’t focus. Instead, she pulled away, retreating down into the depths of herself, into that cold place where she didn’t have to feel anything at all. It was her fortress and armor. It gave her strength to do what she had to do when things got too hard.

She slipped inside, feeling everything else slide away. Her focus sharpened. She could still feel every cell of herself, her blood pulsing, her heart squeezing and releasing. She visualized a door again and reached for it. Her hand went through it, and the vision dissolved.

Fury flared inside her and then tugged away into the frigid chill of her inner fortress.

Into the frigid chill of her inner fortress.

Realization struck her at the same moment she bounced onto the ground. She lay there, the burst of agony a distant feeling. She concentrated on her newfound knowledge.

Ever since she’d been tricked into becoming a Shadowblade, Max had used her inner fortress as a haven, a way to survive the endless torture, the helpless fear, the hate, and the betrayal. In order to overcome Max’s furious resistance, Giselle had tortured her until she could no longer fight the layering on of the Shadowblade spells. In order to keep herself sane as the years went on, Max had created the fortress. But now she knew it wasn’t just a bulwark of emotional and mental protection; it was her door.

Scooter was right. He couldn’t show her the entrance into the abyss. But she’d found it anyway.

She reached out to her body, still hyper-aware of every sinew and hair. She gathered herself and
yanked
. It was like dragging a house through the eye of a needle. She strained, refusing to give up. She might never find this clarity, this control over her body, again.

The world
wrenched
.

Max tumbled down into the dark cold of her stronghold. Everything went black.

She found herself hanging motionless in a starless night. In the distance, tangles of colored thread and thicker yarns spilled across the sea of ink. Flutters of rainbow caught her attention. Streaks and tatters, droplets, and bits of confetti. They swirled and drifted. Clouds of them formed and then dribbled away in streams or dove like flocks of starlings. They spun on invisible whirlwinds and fell like rain.

This was the abyss between worlds. The tangles of thread were pathways to other worlds. Scooter had told her that much. The dancing colors were bits of magic. All around her, she could feel movement, like ocean currents. They moved in all directions, pulling and pushing at her. She held herself still, with no idea how she did so. She wanted not to move, and so she didn’t.

Now what?

She looked down at herself. She was naked. Bruises splotched her chest and stomach. No doubt, her back was a purple patchwork quilt. As she watched, the splotches started to turn green and then yellow as her healing spells kicked in. She drew a shallow breath. Her lungs and ribs ached, but she could breathe.