The Shadows

From out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of white.

As he twisted around, his breath caught in his throat. Trez had emerged from the same door they had all been using in the library; iAm was behind him.

And so the final walk began.

Carrying that which was so precious to him, the Shadow took step after step down the lawn, closing in on what they had been laboring over. Without any conversation, but through some kind of group-think, everybody who was assembled formed two lines, providing him with an aisle.

Trez was transformed, and not in a good way. Like someone who had been on a monthlong trek with insufficient food and water, he was a shrunken, exhausted echo of himself, his face hollow, his aura that of illness, even though he was not sick in a disease sort of way.

As he passed, Rhage shivered.

The makeshift stairs they’d built creaked as Trez went up them, but Rhage wasn’t worried that the steps were going to fall apart. He and Tohr had tested them together a number of times.

And hold they did.

Silhouetted against the moonlit sky, Trez’s dark shape blocked the stars that had come out for the evening, cutting a swath from the galaxy sure as if some god had taken a pair of scissors to the fabric of the universe.

Bending down, he placed her in the center. Then he stayed up top for a while, and Rhage could imagine he was arranging things. Saying a final good-bye.

It was good that that kind of stuff was out of sight, out of hearing. Some things, even in a supportive environment, were best left to privacy.

The torch they were going to use to light it all had come from the Tomb. V had flashed over to the sanctum sanctorum and taken one from the many that lined the great hall—which was yet another way to honor the Shadow and his loss. Tohr set the thing afire when Trez finally stretched up to his full height and backed down the slats, the flames leaping to life on its head, ready to spread further, undaunted by the cold wind that was blowing.

At the foot of the pyre, Trez accepted the torch and the two males spoke. In the flickering light, it was clear that Trez’s chest had been brutally cut and sealed, and there was salt and blood and wax all down the front of his slacks.

Funny how the passage of time could be noted on something other than a clock or a calendar: The condition of that clothing and that flesh spoke about the hours the male had spent tending to his dead.

And then Tohr was falling back in line beside Autumn.

Trez stared at the pyre. Looked up to its top.

After a long moment, he went around to one of the points of the triangular base, leaned in and—

The fire took off as if it were a wild animal freed from a cage, racing over the gasoline pathways, finding its version of nutrition and commencing its meal.

Trez took a step back, the torch falling to his side as if he’d forgotten it still burned.

With a quick lunge, iAm stepped in and removed the thing, and just as he turned away, Trez began to shout.

As chalky wood smoke and orange sparks and fingers of fire cascaded into the night sky, Trez screamed in fury, his torso jutting forward on his hips, his legs sinking down as if he were about to throw himself into the heat.

Before he could think, Rhage jumped out of line and ran to the guy; iAm certainly couldn’t, what with the torch in his hand. Locking his arms around the Shadow’s pelvis, he picked Trez up and backed him away about ten feet.

Even with the wind still coming from behind them and carrying things off, the heat was tremendous.

Trez didn’t seem to notice—not the fact that he had been relocated, nor the reality that if the gusts shifted, he could still be incinerated.

He was just roaring at the pyre, his neck muscles sticking out, his chest pumping up and down, his body jacked forward against the iron bar of Rhage’s hold.

There was no tracking the precise words, but there probably weren’t any.

Sometimes language couldn’t go far enough.

All you could do was scream.

SEVENTY-TWO

“Actually … I think I’d rather stay here.”

As Paradise spoke, she looked up from her desk. Her father was standing in front of her, the report she’d just given him lowering down to his side as if he were stunned.

“But surely you should wish to return home.”

There was no one in the waiting room—for that matter, there wasn’t anybody in the house except for Vuchie and the other staff. Something had happened at the Brotherhood compound, and Wrath had canceled all appointments for the following several nights as he and the Brothers went into mourning. She knew no details, but whatever it was had happened suddenly.

She prayed it wasn’t somebody dying in the war.

“I’m really … happy here.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it was close enough. “I like having my own space.”

Her father glanced around, and then brought over a chair. “Paradise.”

Ah, yes. His “be serious, darling” voice. And usually, when he started off like that, she got sucked back into whatever seat she was sitting in, as if his pater familias tone held a centrifugal force enough to beat gravity.

Not tonight. “No,” she said. “I’m not coming home.”

Oh … great. It turned out there was something even worse: The pain that flared in his eyes now.

She put her hands up to her face. “Please don’t.”

“I just … I do not understand.”

No, she imagined he didn’t. “Father, I need something that’s mine—and I’m not talking about a mate and young and a big house somewhere.”

“There is no shame in having a family.”

“And there should be no shame if a female wants a life of her own, either.”

“Perhaps if you meet the right—”

She dropped her hands down onto the desktop, hitting the edge of her keyboard and making it jump. “I’m not interested in getting mated. Ever.”

At that, he paled. Sure as if she’d told him she wanted to run out naked at noontime.

“Your presentation season is approaching.”

“I have a job now.”

There was a long period of silence, in which he measured her and she didn’t waver. “Is this because we argued?” he asked.

“No.”

“So what … has changed, Paradise?”

“I have.”

Defeat curved her father’s shoulders, and that was when she realized that as much as he was her ghardian according to the Old Laws, in fact, he couldn’t force her to do anything.

Sadly, this was probably long overdue.

“Is it about the training center program?” he asked.

“Yes and no. It’s about me making choices in my own life, instead of having things forced on me. I just … I want to be free.”

Her father shook his head. “I suppose I am from a different generation.”

Crossing her arms on the desk, she leaned into them and thought about what that civilian male had said, the one who’d come for the application—and told her his name, but refused to shake her hand.

The one she found herself looking for every time that front door opened.

“It’s about safety, Father.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Me wanting to take the training course. I think I would like to know how to defend myself. It doesn’t mean that I’ll end up downtown, fighting slayers. It does mean, though, that if something were to happen to me, I’d be a heck of a lot more prepared to deal with it.”

“You are totally protected. Whether you are here or at home—”

“But what if I want to go other places?”

As the next wave of quiet hit, she knew where he was in his mind. Although he rarely said it out loud, it had always been clear to her that, among the many things the male missed about the passing of his beloved shellan, he wished that her mahmen could have partaken in awkward conversations like this. He seemed to assume that having a female intercede would yield more harmonious outcomes—a conclusion that was always available to him because it could never be vetted.

Maybe her mahmen would have helped him in moments like this. Maybe not.

There was a lot rolled into that sigh of his.

Beside her, the phone rang, and she went for the receiver on the first ring, because whatever was on the line would be easier to deal with than these kinds of family dynamics.

“Good evening,” she said.

There was a slight pause, and then a male voice with a strange accent said in the Old Language, “This is the audience house of Wrath, son of Wrath.”

She frowned, and answered in the same way. “Yes, it is. How may I help you?”

“It is located at eight sixteen Wallace Avenue.”

As the male gave her the address, she looked at her father. “How may I help you?”

“You may carry unto your King a message of import. If he does not surrender custody of the Shadow Anointed One, TrezLath, upon midnight on the morrow at the boundaries of the Territory, Her Most Sacred Soul, Queen Rashth, ruler of the s’Hisbe, shall construe the harboring of said male as a declaration of war against our people. She intends for the sacred mating to occur with the heir to the Shadow throne on the first night following her period of mourning. Compliance will spare all vampires much bloodshed. Failure to comply will ensure a scourge against your already beleaguered populace.”