City of Shadows (15 page)

“You mean, why does he have a rod the size of the London Shard up his arse?”

I winced, hoping wherever he was, Nyx's voice hadn't reached him. “Yeah.”

“He thinks he's got a lot to prove. He spent so long fighting to get to the top he's forgotten we're not in Faerie anymore.” Nyx shoved open a set of double doors. We strode down a hall, up the main staircase, and out through the front door. A Range Rover idled against the curb a short walk away. Scaw was in the driver's seat while Samuel rode shotgun.

“Why does he have to prove anything?” In a few strides we'd be at the car and the answers would stop flowing.

“
Faerie was brutal for his kind.” She saw my blank look, slowed her pace, and lowered her voice. “In Faerie, the family you're born into defines you. He wasn't born a warrior like the rest of us. Kael found him as an orphan, living on the fringes of Murias and recruited him. By law, Kael should have let him die. No bloodline, no property to call his own. Samuel was nothing. Faerie isn't kind to those with nothing.”

So many questions spilled into my head. Nyx smiled. “He doesn't know how to stop fighting.”

Much of the London Underground would be closed overnight. And tomorrow, according to Samuel's brief explanation as we drove, strike action would be announced, closing off the entire subway for forty-eight hours while the FA inspected the tunnels.

A nervous engineer let us through the locked gates. Nyx winked through the window as Scaw pulled the Rover away, leaving me about to enter miles of underground tunnels with Samuel at my side.
Wonderful.

“The Crossrail project unearthed a plague pit nearby,” Samuel said, jogging down the steps. “We've had a unit sweep through here, but given the lytch's fondness for the deceased or dying, I want to take another look myself.”

“Plague pit?” And my night was just getting better and better.

The lights rippled on deep into the station and down quiet escalators. At least it wasn't all pitch-black, just as silent as a tomb.

“Mass graves used to dispose of bodies during London's Black Death.”

“
I don't suppose we can blame the fae for the Plague?” I asked, falling behind Samuel as he climbed the static escalators.

“You'd blame the fae for bad weather during Notting Hill Carnival.”

Was that a joke? I couldn't see his face, and his voice had remained level. If he was joking, he was an expert at deadpan. “Yeah, but did you have anything to do with it?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Because the fae aren't fond of answering them.” We leveled out and headed toward the silent platforms. “You still haven't answered.” I definitely heard a frustrated little growl.

“The Plague happened long before our arrival. Though we had a similar outbreak in Faerie.”

“Oh, aren't you all virtually indestructible?”

“Here, yes. Faerie is …
very
different. The weak die quickly there.”

“Did many
weak
fae die?”

“Not as many as could have.” He glanced back. “The Hunt destroyed hundreds. The infected and those who happened to be considered exposed.”

The Hunt?
I was about to ask who or what the Hunt was, but Samuel strode onto an empty platform, his long-legged stride difficult for me to keep pace with. Under the harsh Underground station lights, he seemed all the harder. From what I'd heard, to survive in Faerie you learned to kill. Nyx's words came back to me. Samuel as an orphan, with nothing and nobody. I knew that loneliness and that fight. I'd killed to survive. So had he. And we'd both do it again.

I
stopped at the platform edge and peered into the dark tunnel. “Where would a lytch come from?” My words sailed into the quiet along with the sound of our footfalls on the platform.

Samuel stopped at the edge and dropped down onto the track bed. “Like the rest of us, they were pushed here when Faerie's elders decided to banish those they considered the worst of us.”

“And is Kael one of those? One of the worst?”

Samuel backed up, and lifted his head. He studied me, quietly assessing the best way to answer, or formulating a lie? “The queen brought General Kael with her, and those most devoted to him followed.”

I shivered as the alien memories bubbled to the surface of my thoughts. She'd offered Kael what he must have seen as redemption for the death of his soldiers. Once here, and caught in her web, Kael, like Reign, likely had no other choice but to follow her. That didn't mean the general wasn't guilty. He'd turned the FA against London by having them work for the queen. He'd been responsible for the deaths in the tunnels—the fae warriors I'd killed. And yet, there had to be something good in him to take in Samuel as an orphaned boy, when according to Nyx, fae law dictated he shouldn't have.

I considered Nyx's words as I walked beside the fae who Kael had saved. The general didn't seem the sort to help anyone, unless it benefited him. So why had he helped Samuel? Maybe he'd seen the same potential in Samuel, seen something he could use? Samuel did follow Kael's orders without fault. If there was a bond there, I could exploit it to get my answers.

He stopped at the platform's edge, unclipped a small flashlight from his belt loop, and tossed it to me. “How well does a construct see in the dark?” He flicked
his
own flashlight on and turned toward the tunnel. “The track electrics have been disabled. We can walk the tunnels between here and Bank. Are you afraid of the dark, Alina?”

I'd learned there were various shades of dark, some hungrier than others. Flicking on my flashlight, I followed Samuel into the tunnel, trying not to think about how easily a lytch could hide in my peripheral vision—close enough to breathe down my neck. I swept the flashlight beam around me. The air smelled dry and dusty, with a twang of metal.

“If you were a lytch beast, this is where you'd be, huh?” I walked between two rails so as not to fall over them, but I still couldn't see much farther than a few feet ahead. Samuel didn't seem to be having any problem striding into the dark.

Shivers trickled down my spine. I swept the torchlight behind me, piercing the dark, but finding nothing more than bundles of cables running like veins along the tunnel walls. Facing ahead, I tripped over a rail and stumbled onto Samuel's side of the tracks.

He raked a “
really
” glare over me. “Sometimes you're entirely too human.”

When he faced ahead again, I smiled at his back. He'd think he'd insulted me.

We walked on, the loudest thing the sound of my own thudding heartbeat. “That clinic you took me too. All the FA go there?”

“You don't like silences, do you? That's why you ask questions.”

“You don't like direct questions, do you? That's why you keep changing the subject.”

He hesitated, but kept moving. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, all of the FA are required to frequent that particular clinic.”

“
Don't you, ya know … Well, I mean—isn't it a bit beneath you?”

That garnered me an over-the-shoulder raised-eyebrow glance. I'd have to be subtler in getting my answers.

“It serves its purpose,” he said. “It's that or we stalk humans on the streets of London. As enjoyable as that may be, it's not likely to endear us to the people. And then there's the fact the FA are meant to be enforcing the Trinity Law, not breaking it. We can live in peace here, I'm sure of it. It just takes careful management.”

“Don't the FA ever, ya know … want more?”
Like, enough to steal people and keep them hidden somewhere? People like Becky?

He stopped abruptly and turned his flashlight on me, shining it off to my right so as to keep it out of my eyes. “Nyx told me you'd starved yourself. What were you doing on the Underground in that condition?”

I blinked and lifted my chin at his indignant tone. “Trying not to act on the thoughts in my head.” I could still feel the need crawling beneath my skin. Nyx's top-off had taken the edge off, but it wasn't enough, particularly after the training session.

“Your resistance could have ended in unwilling bespellment. Next time, take what you need at the clinic. I'll take you back there and tie you down, if I have to.”

He was right, but that didn't mean I had to like it. I pushed forward, around him, and headed into the dark. “Does Kael use the same clinic?” My voice echoed ahead until the tunnel swallowed it up.

“Why?”

“He seems so restrained. I can't imagine him waiting in line like we had to.” I lowered the flashlight and watched my footing over the tracks.

“
Yes, Kael uses the clinic.”

I didn't miss the slight inflection at the end of Samuel's sentence. More of a question than an answer. “But?”

“But … Ask him your irritating questions.”

“You can thank the queen for that.”

“She deliberately made you irritating?”

I snorted. “She made me curious.”

A few more steps into the dark. “What's it like, being a construct?”

I huffed a laugh through my nose. “What's it like being an arrogant fae asshole?” The words left my lips before I could stop them, or maybe I hadn't wanted to. It's not like I was telling him something he didn't already know.

“I don't have a frame of reference to compare it to.”

“Exactly. I'm me and you're you, and we'll never know what that feels like.”

“But you're Arachne too? If we are to believe what we've seen so far.”

Arachne.
My stride tripped. The way he just dropped it into conversation, as though it was common knowledge. My heart beat fast and light inside my chest, shortening my breath.

“What must that feel like? Her power inside of you? Exhilarating, I imagine.”

“I'm trying not to think about it.”

The general had been talking, sharing his theories with Samuel. And others too, probably. Hearing the spirit's name on Samuel's lips made her real and brought home exactly what it was I was battling inside.

“I'm not sure what I am, there's never been a construct quite as complex as me. Maybe I'm just
a thing
made with mismatched pieces of Faerie. Maybe I'm nothing. What difference does it make?”

When
he next spoke, he'd moved closer. “Granted, possession of a construct is unlikely. But, don't you want to know?”

I turned on my heel and shone the beam in his face. He flinched away but not before his tricolored eyes contracted in the light. “What I want is to live like normal people do. I just want to go for walks in the park on Sundays, maybe go on a date, eat chocolate cake, swim at the beach, have sex, have lovers, friends, people, and things I care about. And people who care about me, because of me, not because of the damn touch, or bespellment, or what I might be. A
real
life. That's all I want to know.” It was true. All of it. And hearing myself say it wrapped the loneliness around me all over again.

Samuel pushed my flashlight aside. He rapidly blinked. His dark eyes adjusted, pupils widening, and he looked down at me, his fae features tightening in—what? Confusion? Doubt? I wasn't sure. He couldn't possibly understand. A fae like him, ancient compared to my few weeks of life. He had everything. I had—nothing.

I turned away, but his fingers curled around my upper arm and pulled me back. I opened my mouth to protest when he squeezed hard enough to hurt.

“Our words no longer echo,” he said, breath cool against my face.

The dark swallowed his sentence. I froze, acutely aware of my own short, sharp breaths. The quiet pushed in. The glow from my flashlight ended a foot ahead of us, as though I'd pointed it at a seamless curtain of night.

“We're not alone,” I whispered, inching back against Samuel. He pulled me close. I wouldn't have thought him afraid, had I not felt the slight tremor run through him.

I twisted the torch, painting blobs of white on the blackness, until I found a slither where the beam punched through. “There. Go!” I bolted. Samuel had hold
of
my arm, but from one step to the next his grip slipped, and his fingers released. When I glanced back, the dark folded over him. His wide fearful eyes fixed on me. And then he was gone. Swallowed by shadows.

I
skidded to a halt. “Hey! Remember me?”

The dark rippled.
Samuel's in there. That thing is eating him alive.

I stood firm and dug deep inside my own mind, reaching for the memories I knew to be as dark as the shadow now slithering toward me. Memories of a beautiful world poisoned by violence—memories of the slaughter. And the power. So much draíocht. So much life. The air, the earth, everything. And all of it was mine. I opened my arms and welcomed it. More, I needed more. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.
Feed.

I laughed into the dark, and welcomed the lytch as it wrapped its slick tendrils around my body. At the touch, I pulled—consumed it down as though I'd been starved, blinded, and trapped, and the lytch's life, its draíocht, was now mine. I could see again, breathe again; I was alive.

Chapter Thirteen

I came back to myself sprawled across the tracks. Flashlights flicked back and forth deep inside the tunnel.

Samuel.

“Over here!” I called.

I stumbled to my feet and staggered to the crumpled body between me and the incoming FA. Samuel lay still, his eyes closed and face milky pale. I dropped to my
knees
and touched him without thinking. Instantly a jolt of pain and pleasure skittered through my hand and into his cheek. He snapped his eyes open and focused them on me. His lips parted, as though he wanted to say something, but hands grabbed me and hauled me away.