Lost in Shadows Read online

  Honestly, this didn't bode well.

  "We need Kiera!" I shouted to Deacon, who was dodging and parrying two warriors, each of whom appeared ready to remove his body parts.

  "At least another hour," he shouted back, and since my only response to that would have been a very loud curse, I stayed quiet and focused on fighting. My blows were amounting to nothing, as there really is no effective way to fight a rock. With an iron mallet, maybe I could have smashed their heads to smithereens, but I was all out of mallets at the moment. It was just Deacon and me and our knives in an empty chamber with nothing but a stone table, four walls, some murals, and a damned dangerous stream.

  A damned dangerous stream.

  I was, I realized as another of the stone beasts leaped on me, a complete idiot. Rather than attack, I ran, this time heading for the stream. What I planned to do was dangerous, but right then I didn't see another option. The stream was wide, and if I lost my footing at all, I'd be living out the rest of my immortal existence as microscopic bits of fried Lily. Not my idea of a good time.

  The warrior thundered after me, so close I could almost feel the point of his blade at my back. I reached the edge, I launched—

  —and I landed on the far side, falling into a roll and twisting back around to face my oncoming attacker.

  As I'd expected, the warrior followed in my footsteps, but as it was about to land, I kicked out, catching it across the face with a solid crescent kick and throwing off its trajectory. It tumbled to the ground, right at the edge of the stream, and for a moment I feared it would claw its way free. To offset that possibility, I raced forward and kicked it once, hard, in the face. That was all it took. The warrior slid backward, its tenuous grip lost, and fell into the stream with a sickly, hissing splat.

  Two seconds later, the warrior was no more.

  Not that I had time to congratulate myself. My melted warrior's buddy was already launching himself over to my side of the stream. But these dudes weren't too bright, and I was able to get him with the same maneuver. And as I watched the stone body fizzle away in the acid, I saw that downstream, Deacon had followed my lead and taken his two attackers out the exact same way.

  I stepped back, took a running start, and leaped over the stream, then hurried to crouch beside Kiera. "I don't know how to leave," I admitted to Deacon. "Clarence conjured the bridge, and he was supposed to send another one. But . . ." I trailed off with a shrug. "We need to get out of here, but I don't even know where here is."

  "China," he said. "The Buddhist grottoes." He looked around. "Somehow, I don't think the Chinese have excavated this far back."

  China. Great. Now I really was wishing I'd brought my passport. "Can you conjure a bridge?" I asked, hopefully.

  He shook his head. "I piggybacked."

  I frowned, then nodded toward Kiera. "You knocked her out; you get to carry her. And let's go."

  Once he had her up and in his arms, I realized that even though the stone warriors were destroyed, that odd, low thrum still filled the chamber. "What is that? Is that the bridge? Is it about to appear?"

  Deacon shook his head, and I caught the wary expression in his eyes. "No. I think that's something different." He shot me a sharp glance. "Come on. And hurry."

  He didn't have to ask me twice. The sound was getting louder and louder, and I'd seen enough adventure movies to guess what was going to happen next—now that we'd stolen the treasure, the chamber was going to collapse around our ears.

  Except it didn't.

  No, what happened was much, much worse. Because while the walls stayed high and strong, our path was immediately blocked by a whirling, swirling mass of air and energy, and right in the center of it all was my hulking, tattooed, warrior-demon friend. And he looked seriously pissed.

  "Fuck," Deacon yelled, which summed up my feelings nicely.

  "Come on!" I have absolutely no idea what I expected to do. I'd already learned that fighting this behemoth was a risky proposition, so the flight part of the fight-or-flight response had kicked into high gear. Except I wasn't going anywhere. Whatever power the warrior had used to grab the car had a hold of me, and I couldn't run, I couldn't hide, I couldn't do anything except slide backward, my feet suddenly not my own, and though I fell forward and tried to grip the rock with my hands, all I accomplished was ripping my fingernails to shreds as the force field dragged me back, back, back toward the behemoth.

  "Deacon!"

  "The bridge! Lily, the bridge!"

  He was right. Across the stream—less than five feet away—the bridge had appeared, an orangish cylinder of mist and light, and I needed to be inside there. Needed to be whisked to safety, but it wasn't happening because I was being sucked into the hell beast's arms.

  Deacon was at my side, Kiera at my feet, and I grabbed on to her lifeless body as Deacon took his knife and slashed my arm. "What the fuck?" I yowled, but he wasn't listening. Instead, he was smearing his arm with blood, and then, as I watched, he took the jade box I'd retrieved from the stream and, using his bloody hand and arm, thrust it into the water and filled it up. Then he ran toward the warrior, drops of acid burning holes in the rock as it sloshed out over the sides of the container.

  He hurled the acid toward the warrior's face, and though I'd expected his flesh to melt away, in fact, all it did was make him howl, a thunderous roar that shook the very walls of the cavern.

  But it was enough. Because it also shook off his hold on me, and before he could reach out with his mind and grab me once again, Deacon grabbed up Kiera, and he and I lunged forward, jumping over the stream, and thrusting ourselves through the mist and into the bridge that led back home.

  The darkness consumed us once again, and I could see nothing. Could hear nothing. And then I felt the press of Deacon against me, his body hard against mine, his lips firm and demanding, and then his low whisper. "Remember your promise."

  And then my hand was closed not around Deacon's hand, but around Kiera's.

  Deacon was gone, and it was just me and Kiera and a job well done.

  15

  “Paralytic," I said, as I put Kiera gently onto the floor in Zane's office. "She’ll be okay."

  "How?" Zane asked, and since I wasn't sure what, if anything, Kiera had seen, I had to answer truthfully. "Deacon Camphire." I met Clarence's eyes. "I almost took him out," I lied, intrigued by the way he winced when I said that. "But I lost the opportunity."

  As I'd expected, relief flashed on his face, so brief that I wouldn't have seen it had I not been looking for it. But it was there, and I didn't understand why he wanted Deacon alive.

  I was, however, going to figure that out.

  "We got away, though," I said, because I didn't want to linger and give Clarence the chance to realize how very interested I was in the subject. "There was another demon—huge—and he and Deacon got at it. And in the midst of all the scrapping, I got the relic."

  "And this other demon?"

  "The dude we met before." I smiled wryly. "I don't think he likes me much. And he's got power, Clarence. Just like we told you. Serious power. He shows up again, there's no guarantee I can beat him." And that was an assessment I really didn't like to make.

  What I also didn't like was what I was going to say next. Except that a part of me did like it. Because I liked the hit. Liked the power. And I needed more power and more strength if I was going to win. "I need more," I said, looking hard at Zane. "I need to train, and I need to train hard and fast and often. I want to be as strong as I can be. If I'm not, Tattoo Boy may end up getting it all in the end, and that's not going to make anybody happy."

  Zane inclined his head. "Very well. We shall train, and we shall train hard."

  I nodded, trying not to look too excited by the possibility, by the knowledge that soon I would feel the kill inside me, and it would fill me up and make me strong.

  I shivered, hating myself for those thoughts but realizing that they were coming more and more often. I was changing. I knew it. I could
see it.

  And I didn't know how to stop it.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. "At any rate, on the whole, a successful mission."

  "Where is it?" Clarence said, moving toward me, his hand outstretched.

  I hesitated, knowing that in the end Johnson wanted the thing, but when I looked over at Rose, now curled up on the bench and watching me impassively, there was no sign from Lucas that I shouldn't cooperate. I didn't know what plan he had for getting the key back from Clarence and Penemue, but apparently it wasn't thwarted by handing the necklace off to Clarence.

  Not that I intended to let him follow through on whatever plan he was hatching. My priority might be getting Johnson out of Rose, but that didn't mean I was keen on Penemue getting his hands on the Oris Clef. And since I was finding the key in pieces, I was beginning to think that the best thing to do was use the third piece to bargain for Rose, then somehow turn the tables on Lucas and Penemue and prevent them from getting the Oris Clef altogether.

  How exactly I'd do that, though, was another question. What I did know was that if Clarence had the pieces, my plan would be more difficult. So I hated to hand them off.

  Not that I had much choice.

  "There's more," I said, as I reluctantly passed the thing to Clarence. "My arm popped on the next location."

  "Did it?" Clarence asked. "Well, let's see."

  I begrudgingly held out my arm and discovered that the second tattoo was no longer raised. "But it was," I protested. "It started burning right after I got the necklace."

  "After you obtained the necklace?" Zane asked, leaving Kiera's side to join us. "Or after you put it on?"

  I tried to remember. "On," I said. "I remember I slipped it on, and my arm began to burn again."

  He turned his attention to Clarence, and damned if he didn't look a little smug. "I'm afraid your time with the relic is up, mon ami. If you wish to find the second hiding place, the relic belongs in Lily's hands."

  Clarence hesitated, then peeled off the necklace and passed it to me. "All right, then. Let's see it."

  I slipped it back on and felt my flesh begin to sear.

  "They're connected," Zane said. "Each one untraceable until the previous one has been found. And none discoverable except by the one who holds them all."

  "Lucky me," I said, but though I'd added sarcasm to my voice, in truth, I was secretly pleased. This new turn of events gave me another level of control. And so far, in this crazy world, control had been seriously lacking in my life.

  "What are you waiting for?" Clarence asked. "See if you can get there."

  "Now?" The idea was really not appealing.

  "The convergence comes, Lily," Clarence said. "There is no time to waste."

  And since that was a point I really couldn't argue with, I let out a loud, annoyed breath and held out my hand for Clarence. "Don't let go," I said. Then, on the count of three, I pressed my palm over the tattoo and let the portal suck me in.

  Once again, I encountered the same protections, and I couldn't get close. The bridge didn't work, and my mission was going to be aborted until Clarence could manufacture another spell to conjure another bridge and get me close to the relic.

  This time, however, it wouldn't be a mystery where I was going. Because this time, even I knew the landmark.

  "Stonehenge?" Clarence said, when I'd returned and told him.

  "That's what I saw. But how a piece of the key could be hidden around a bunch of big rocks is completely beyond me."

  Kiera was sitting up by then, still weak, but alive and alert. "Another dimension?" she said, the words clearly costing her. "Maybe Stonehenge really is a doorway to another dimension, like in all those stories you hear."

  I moved to sit beside her, momentarily forgetting that I didn't trust her. I'd been paralyzed like that before, though I hadn't been put to sleep as well, and I still vividly remembered the sense of helplessness and fear that had overcome me in that vulnerable state.

  "It's a good idea," I said. "Except my mystical magical map powers don't work if the doohickey is in another dimension. It's there," I said. "It's just hidden."

  "And now we build the bridge," Clarence said, standing and beginning to move around the room. Now that he knew what to do, I assumed it didn't take a whole lot of prep to put the thing together.

  "Hold it," I said. "We're wiped. And I told you about warrior dude. I want to get stronger. And Kiera and I both need to rest." I also needed time to figure out if there was a way to force Johnson out of Rose. If this whole thing moved at lightning speed, there was no way I'd keep up.

  For a moment, I thought Clarence would argue. Then he nodded, apparently realizing a rested hunter is a happy hunter. "Very well." He held out his hand. "The relic, Lily."

  "But—"

  "You don't need it at the moment, and it needs to stay safe."

  I'm not sure why, but I twisted around to find Zane's eyes. He nodded, and I took the chain off again. "Don't lose it," I said dryly, earning me a smile from Clarence that was utterly lacking in humor.

  Kiera turned down Zane's offer to train, claiming she still felt ripped from the paralytic. I, however, was eager for the kill. And though I knew I should get Rose home—though I knew that the last thing she needed to see was her sister impaling demons—I stayed and took them on. Demon after demon, letting Zane release them, then toying with them until I grew bored and stabbed them hard with my knife, then stood there, head back, as the power of the kill filled me and flowed through me. Glorious.

  "It is enough, I think, Cherie," Zane said, when I ordered him to send out one more. My count at that point totaled ten, and I was hot and bothered and itching for a real fight, not this pansy-ass shit, where the demons were so easy to kill I could practically do it in my sleep.

  "More," I said, stepping gingerly out of the training arena to get right in his face.

  His hands pressed gently on my shoulders, and his eyes were infinitely sad. I looked away, both fearful of getting sucked into a vision, and also oddly ashamed. "Lily. You do not want more."

  "Don't I?" I asked. "Don't you want me to have more? Suck more in. Make me a badass warrior?"

  "No," he said, and that one simple word did me in. I released a small sob and clung to him. "I hate it," I whispered. "I hate the dark." Except I didn't. I wanted to—so help me, I wanted to despise it—and yet it called to me. Enticed me. And lured me in with sweet, whispered promises.

  He said nothing, merely stroked my hair, but his body was tense. Tight. And I couldn't help but believe that he hated it, too. I wanted so badly to break down and ask him if he knew who he really worked for. Or if he did know, if he did it because he wanted to, or because he craved the mortality that they'd promised him. Death for a man who'd lived forever, and would otherwise continue on.

  But I couldn't. I wasn't sure if I was afraid of the answer or of blowing my cover. All I know is that I was afraid, and that I kept silent.

  “Take the girl home," he said. "Rest. Eat ice cream." He tilted my chin up. "Be Lily for a night."

  I managed a smile and didn't tell him that I wasn't sure I remembered how. More than that, being Lily wasn't my biggest concern anymore. That had shifted to Rose being Rose, and with that problem in mind, I thought of someplace—and someone—who actually might be able to help me.

  By the time we'd taken a taxi and retrieved my bike, it was already almost two in the morning. Rose was staggered, the exhaustion so thick in her body it practically leaked out of her. I couldn't take her home, though. I needed to do this errand. I didn't know how much downtime Clarence would give me, and I needed all my ducks in their proper order.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To mark you," I said, the words surprising me when I realized they were true. I'd had my name—Lily—tattooed on the small of my back not long after I'd found myself hanging out in Alice's body. And now, yeah, I intended to mark Rose with her own name, despite the interloper inside her.

  I had a particular
tattoo shop in mind, and when we arrived, I was grateful to see that the Madame Parrish, Psychic sign was still lit. She was the real reason I'd come. But if I could put Rose on the table with John working his magic on her skin, then I could talk with the strange woman myself and not risk being overheard, by either Rose or the demon who lived inside her.

  "Well, look who's back," John said, as we walked in. He was doing something in his work area, and I saw Rose go a little pale when she saw the table on which she'd lie.

  "Do you want to?" I asked Rose.

  For a moment, I thought she'd say no, the thought distressing me more than it should. My mom might not approve, but I wanted her marked. Wanted her named.

  "My name?"

  “That's right."

  She drew in a breath. "Does it hurt?"

  "A little."

  Her lips disappeared, she'd pressed them so tight together. "Let me see yours."

  I shrugged out of my coat and pulled up the back of my shirt, revealing the intricate lily tattoo, along with my name spelled out above.

  "I get a rose, right? And my name."

  "Sure thing. Whatever you want."

  She looked at John, whose easy smile calmed her. Then she nodded.

  "Come on, then," John said, holding out his hand. "Let's get you set up."

  From the shadows near the window, Madame Parrish stood. "And you have come to see me."

  I cocked my head. "How did you know that?" I'd killed a Secret Keeper and absorbed his essence. She shouldn't be able to get into my head.

  She laughed. "A guess. Don't worry. Your secrets are now safe." She held out her hands. "It is good to see you, Lily."

  "How do you know about me?" Because I was certain that she did—that she knew even more than what she'd seen in my head during my previous visit. And though I knew I should be wary of her, I wasn't. I was also certain she was on my side, and if I was wrong, I didn't want to know it. Having an ally, even one who looked to be ninety and hid in a tattoo parlor, made me feel safe and warm.

  "I know many things," she said, and I knew better than to press. Press, and she might leave, and I'd be stuck there watching Rose get a tattoo. "She is your sister?"