Shadow Eater, page 7
part #2 of Shadowlands Series
They came through the clouds to see flying figures of marble, winged and deadly, wielding golden spears. Clay had never seen anything like it. Their wings were beautiful and iridescent. A dark-haired male seemingly carved from onyx came up close, his eyes so blue they were orbs of aqua fire. He was clad in tight black leather, every contour of his body lovingly on display. He said nothing, but held his spear in a battle-ready position.
Pearl roared and spat flame. The man was quick, darting out of the way of the stream of fire.
The other flying folk were moving into formation. They were building a wall!
The dragon dove. Clay’s throat seized as the ground came up to meet him. At the last minute, Pearl swept up, slipping under the wall of warriors.
They were getting away from the spear-wielding, leather-bound creatures!
But Clay’s relief was short-lived as the winged people shot past them, moving faster than Pearl could fly. Soon the wall was back. There must have been at least sixty of them. Half of them broke away from the wall, forming a circle around Clay and Pearl.
The man from before was close again.
“Who are you?” Clay said.
Pearl released her fire, a huge ball of it hurtling through the sky to the wall of muscled flesh.
The man and his fellow winged folk all managed to avoid getting crispy. Pearl growled.
“It’s okay, Pearl,” Clay said. But it wasn’t and she knew it. He could see her looking for a way out. She beat her wings and surged forward.
Just move out of the way, just let us go, dammit. Why would they want to take on a fire-breathing animal? But they didn’t move. Strong in numbers, they held their ground.
“Who are you?” Clay called. His words were swallowed by the air rushing around him.
The winged folk lifted their spears in a perfectly synchronised motion. Golden spears became golden torches, cutting through the dark in a blaze of fire brighter than Pearl’s.
The dragon reared, wings spread, roaring her fury.
Clay slipped from her back, tumbling off the side. His jacket snagged on her claws, leaving him dangling upside down. Her roar was deafening and he jerked around, the material of his garment coming apart. Clay kept his eyes closed against the golden blaze, praying to the Mother that he wouldn’t go head first to his death, that his jacket was strong enough to keep him alive.
Mother, I ask you to guide me to my sister…
The material ripped some more. Was this it? Was his prayer being answered? Maybe Ash was dead and now he was getting what he wanted—to see her again?
My sister isn’t dead!
The jacket gave way.
He was falling.
He was hurtling toward death, unable to close his eyes as he fell, when suddenly muscular arms wrapped tight around his waist, halting his descent. His back was pressed up against a solid figure, warm breath tickled his neck. Wings beat behind him. He squirmed, trying to break free.
“Do you really want me to let you go?”
The male voice was a powerful baritone with the hint of a lamenting lilt. Clay suppressed a shudder.
Thinking about it, the man was right.
Looking down, he saw the familiar dark skin. “Who are you?”
“Your saviour, it seems.”
“Why?” His question was met with silence, but Clay could be persistent if need be, especially when it came to understanding how things worked, and these creatures were a new piece of the puzzle that was the Shadowlands. “Why not let me die? You were gonna kill us anyway.”
“Your assumption is incorrect.”
“You flew at us with a weapon.”
“Saularian soldiers must carry their weapon at all times.”
“So, you weren’t going to kill me?”
“Not unless you posed an immediate threat to Saul. Do you pose an immediate threat to Saul?”
Saul? Another place, it seemed, just like this Enchansa he had heard talk about. “Er... no.”
“In that case you will merely be taken in for questioning. The air space around Saul is protected and you have violated our borders by entering our air space.”
Okay, that sounded reasonable enough. “And after questioning you can let me leave?”
“You will be permitted to exit once we are satisfied you are not a threat.”
Pearl’s roar filled the air.
He sighed. “Fine, but please put me back on my dragon, she tends to get antsy without me. I can’t guarantee her behaviour unless I’m with her.” He couldn’t guarantee her behaviour at all, but he knew she’d be calmer if he was with her.
“Very well.”
Pearl stopped shrieking as he rose into her line of vision, floating in the man’s arms.
She growled, but Clay could see relief in her eyes. “I’m okay.”
Pearl’s growls dissipated, wings beating to keep her in the air. There wasn’t a scratch on her, so these people hadn’t caused her harm. And the golden light had dimmed a little even though the spears were still blazing in a circle around them.
“I will return you to her back, but any attempt to flee will be met with deadly force.” The man said it as a statement of fact.
Clay looked at Pearl, hoping she understood. “No, we won’t flee.”
The man flew closer to Pearl. “I’m giving him to you,” he said.
Pearl’s eyes blazed.
The man placed Clay on the dragon’s back. As he was released, Clay turned to face him, noting how unfazed he seemed at being so close to Pearl.
The Saularian soldiers moved to flank them.
“Now you will enter Saul.”
ASH
We stopped for breath on the other side of Jiva’s museum.
“This place…” Ryder shook his head, his lip curling. “Disgusting, all this space untouched.”
“I know, but Avery says they’ll make it habitable, put a ward over it so our people can live here. He even said something about treaties to obtain food.”
“And you believed him, I suppose, just like you believed he’d take you to find Clay?”
He had a point, but I didn’t like how naïve it made me sound.
Ryder’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. “That Shadowlander will say whatever it takes to get you to cooperate with him. Trust me, they’re only interested in what you can do for them.”
“I don’t doubt it, but as long as it can benefit us all I’ll play along. There is no treaty, you know. They could have come over whenever they liked, but they didn’t. They’re just not that interested in us. I have to hope that we can come to some kind of agreement where we can all coexist.”
Ryder smiled dryly. “The eternal optimist.”
“No, that would be Clay.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the gadget Viola had given me. It fit snugly in the palm of my hand. Ornate and golden, it was a pretty piece.
“What is it?” Ryder asked.
“Our guide. Her name is True. Viola said we needed to head west and this would show us the way.”
I held it out, squinting in the moonlight to read the dial. It pointed north so I turned on the spot until it hit west.
“Follow me and keep your eyes peeled.”
“You can count on it.”
We walked in silence, vigilant and aware of our surroundings. The stillness was unnerving—not a rustle, not a whisper, even the sound of our footsteps was muted. I began to wonder if we were actually even here. Maybe this was some strange waking dream. The landscape grew sparser as we left the ruins of the city behind and moved onto terrain that had belonged to the Shadowlanders before the merge. The earth underfoot grew softer as cement streets and rubble was replaced with packed soil. The twisted, charred corpses of trees appeared, bowing their heads as if in greeting.
I kept checking the compass to make sure we weren’t deviating off course and sure enough I had to adjust out trajectory on more than one occasion.
“The shifts?” Ryder asked.
“Must be,” I said.
I’m not sure how long we walked, I didn’t have anything to mark the passage of time, but my aching leg muscles testified that it had been long enough.
“We should stop here and take a break.” We parked our butts on the ground by a dead tree and I pulled the pouch of beans from my pocket. “You hungry?”
Ryder glanced at the small bag. “Yeah, but I doubt whatever you have in there is gonna fill my belly.”
I shook a couple of beans onto the palm of me hand. “Trust me.”
Ryder’s eyes narrowed as he took in the beans and then he shrugged, took one, and popped it in his mouth, chewing vigorously before swallowing.
“How’d it taste?” I asked.
“Sweet.”
I popped the other one into my mouth, and sure enough it had a distinctive sugary flavour. It was gone too soon, but I had to admit I did feel pretty full.
Ryder patted his stomach.
The ache in my legs had abated and I felt silly for taking a rest. “We should keep moving.” I made to stand up.
“Wait!” Ryder held out his hand. “What’s the plan for when we find Clay?”
“Um, we take him back to Apocalypse with us.”
Ryder sighed. “Why? Why would you want to go back there? That Avery guy obviously just wants to use you, control you to get rid of the Shadow things. You think he’s gonna be all ‘It’s cool that you ran away let’s forget about it?’”
“Well, he won’t have much choice. He needs me.”
“So what’s stopping him using Clay as leverage?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, you’re not that dense, Ash. You’re just refusing to see it. What’s stopping them from locking Clay up and blackmailing you to work for them?”
“That won’t happen.” My words sounded hollow, even to me, but I had to believe there was some honour to our main agreement and that they wouldn’t resort to such low tactics to get what they wanted.
“Why take the risk?”
And this is where I had to finally say the words that I had been dreading. “Because I have nowhere else to go. Because I’m a monster to our people, and because... because, like it, or not, I’m one of them now.”
Ryder stared at me for a long beat, jaw clenched, eyes bright in the moonlight. “Fine, then we go somewhere else. We’ll use that compass to get as far away from them as we can.”
For a moment I entertained the thought of leaving, of finding a new home somewhere in this new world, but I had seen the Infernan’s cruelty and distaste for anyone lesser than them. My gut told me that wherever I went, that was all I would find. I had gained a foothold here and despite Avery’s duplicity, I believed deep down he wanted what was best for both the humans and the Shadowlanders. Why else take them in and give them homes? And Jiva’s fascination for our way of life—his museum told me that he valued our existence in his own way. As for Daemon, I trusted him and that was enough.
I stood up and brushed down my trousers. “We go back, and that’s the end of it.” The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention.
Ryder pulled himself up to his full height and glared down his nose at me. “No, that is not the end of it.”
I raised my chin and met his glare head on, all the while aware of the growing sensation that we were being watched.
The fire in Ryder’s eyes dimmed and morphed into something else, something that looked like caution and then, strangely enough, anger.
“Watch out!” he yelled, reaching for me, but I was already airborne.
“Ash!”
I opened my mouth to scream, my brain scrambling to figure out what the heck was going on as the ground whizzed past below me. I was rushing away from Ryder, suspended in mid-air, carried by an unseen force. I bucked and twisted, but the force was unrelenting and then I saw it, a shifting darkness, like a Shadow but not as formless. This one had the shape of a man, a very large man, and the more I focused the more I could see.
“Ash!” Ryder was gaining on us, moving faster than I could have imagined. “Drop her!”
“Yeah, drop me!” I battered at the shadow man, but to no avail, and then Ryder was right there, right behind us, and I was reaching for him, our fingers grazing but not latching on.
Shit, this was fucking nuts! Ryder’s eyes were slits as he ducked his head and injected a further burst of speed. I screamed as he barrelled into us, taking the shadow man down and sending me rolling across the bumpy ground. I jumped to my feet and paused in awe as Ryder battered the shadow man, like actually beat his shadow face to a shadow pulp. He pulled him close and then shoved him away. The shadow man stumbled and then turned and ran.
Ryder turned his head to lock eyes with me and I just stood there, frozen, processing all the kinds of wrong this was.
He held up his hands. “I can explain.”
I shook my head and backed away because I knew now what my gut had been telling me all along. This wasn’t my Ryder. “Don’t come any closer!”
Ryder stopped. “I’m not going to hurt you, Ash. You know I’d never hurt you.”
“I don’t know shit! Who the hell are you?”
Ryder held up his hands. “You know who I am, Ash. It’s me, Ryder.”
Mother, I so wanted to believe that, I so wanted it to be him, but no human could have run that fast, and the way he had taken on the shadow man... Ryder was tough, but that had been insane. I took a slow, even breath. “Who are you?”
Ryder lowered his hands, his earnest expression melted, and the left side of his beautiful mouth lifted. “Great instincts, awesome deductions skills. I love it.”
Something about the inflection in his words, the tone of his voice rang familiar. But I couldn’t pinpoint it.
He cocked his head. “You know we’ve met before, right?” He smiled, and suddenly he looked nothing like Ryder any longer. Suddenly he looked like no one I had ever seen, yet someone who I felt I knew.
I shook my head. “I think I’d remember.”
“That’s just it, Ashling, you wouldn’t, not unless I wanted you to.” He flicked his wrist in my direction and a sharp pain lanced through my temple. I wanted to buckle, to clutch my head, but I grit my teeth and rode the pain. Finally it ebbed, bringing with it a flood of images. The man in the Under who had calmed the Knightmare, the same man who had spoken to me at Brialla’s gathering before I’d gone to save the hellion girl.
“Remember me now?”
I nodded. “Where is Ryder?”
He balked. “That’s what you want to ask me? Not, ‘Who are you?’ or ‘How’d you do that?’ or ‘Why?’” He shook his head. “Your concern for your friend is touching, but it will also be your downfall.”
“Answer the question.”
He rolled his eyes. “Your friend is dead.”
This time the pain was too sudden to bear. I gasped, and doubled over. “No...”
“Sorry, this place is perilous and he was swanning about screaming ‘Clay! Clay!’ and yeah, he got eaten”
Ryder was dead? Ryder was dead! Oh, Mother! I had to keep it together. “Why did you make yourself look like him? Why are you... what do you want from me?”
He snapped his fingers. “Finally the girl asks the right questions.”
My best friend was dead and he was playing with me! “Just answer the damn question!”
He tsked. “I could tell you that I wanted to liberate you from the dream eaters’ clutches, I could tell you that you’re meant for more than devouring Shadows, I could tell you that you are bound for betrayal and disappointment because no one will understand you like I do, but if I tell you all these things then I’ll spoil all the fun.”
Fun? The guy was crazy. Ryder was dead. I felt sick
I didn’t know what he was and I didn’t have time for his games. “I want you to leave me alone.”
He shrugged. “I can do that... for now. You need more time anyway.”
“Time for what?” As soon as I asked the question, his eyes lit up, and I regretted it. He wanted me to engage and I wasn’t going to. “Forget it, just piss off!”
He caught his bottom lip between his even, white teeth and slowly released it. “I’ll be seeing you, Ashling. Such a pleasure getting to know you.” He turned and winked out of existence.
I realised, after a long beat of just staring at the spot he had been, that I was now out in the Shadowlands completely alone.
ASH
I think I was having a panic attack. No, I was sure I was having one. True was gone. The compass must have fallen out of my pocket when the weird shadow man had nabbed me, and now I was lost, like full on I-don’t-know-where-the-fuck-I’m-going lost. There were no landmarks, nothing to hold onto, and I was too scared to stop and take a breath. What if the strange shadow man thing came back? What if something with eight legs and fangs burrowed up from the ground and attacked me? Yeah, I was good with the Shadows, but everything else was a gamble. I could run, but there was no way I could fight. I had no weapons and only basic survival skills.
I wanted to berate my heart for overriding my brain, but I knew I’d let it get the upper hand. Clay needed me and fear was not an option, so I kept walking. The terrain was unimpressive, bland and samey; trees, trees, and more trees, although, if I wasn’t mistaken, the foliage was getting thicker and the trees closer together, so maybe I was getting somewhere after all. Corallee, the huge spider who had spun the body suit for my trip to Inferna, was from Enchansa and she lived in a forest, so maybe Enchansa was forestland? I was clutching at straws and I knew it, but it seemed to stem the panic, and the band around my chest loosened just a little.
A strange sound cut through the silence.
At first I thought I’d imagined it. I’d grown so accustomed to just the sound of my muted steps and erratic breath, but no, there it was again.
Boots!
I froze, dropped low, and scanned the area about me.
Silence.
My pulse, which had kicked up a notch, began to settle, and then they came out of nowhere. No, not nowhere, they’d been there all along, dressed in clothes to blend with the terrain.
They weren’t monsters—they were human!
