Shadow Fall (16 page)

Balm hadn’t signed it, but she didn’t need to. No one else could chastise and infuriate and bestow permission all at once like the eternal head of the Gilead Commission. Kira knew Balm wasn’t happy that she hadn’t traveled to Santa Costa with her after wrapping up Bernie’s affairs in London. Kira had still been reeling from her trip behind the Veil and meeting the other Balm, and finding out that Balm had known her mother all along without telling Kira. Going to Santa Costa before processing all of that would have been a big mistake.

With the surgical gloves still firmly in place, Kira lifted the hinged lid of the inlaid box. A stack of letters lay inside, the edges of some envelopes yellowed with age. Kira recognized Balm’s bold scrawl in the letters addressed to Ana Guamayo in a town she’d never heard of in the West African nation of Benin. Other letters were addressed to Serena Balm in flowing script.

Balm knew Kira’s mother.

Kira had known that, of course, since Balm had shared the information in one of their dream walks. What she hadn’t realized was how well Balm knew her birth mother. Apparently very well, and for years, according to some of the time stamps on the envelopes.

A glittering object caught her eye. A gold locket rested in the bottom of the decorated box. The locket looked almost like a Tibetan prayer box, with filigree on each side of the inch-long box and a tiny hinged lid.

This locket had belonged to her mother. All she had to do was take off the surgical gloves, then cup the pendant in the palm of her hand. She was seconds away from finally knowing her mother. And perhaps the identity of her father.

Before she could change her mind, Kira stripped off the gloves and picked up the pendant.

S
ensations bombarded Kira with gale-force strength, scouring away her sense of self. She grimly held on as her world compressed, turned inside out, and seemed to fold in on itself. This horrible wrenching sensation was unlike anything she’d ever felt before during a reading, a sensation that threatened to strip away her extrasense.

Finally, as blackness danced along the edges of her vision, she pushed through the magical vortex to the other side. She found herself falling upward, arms flailing, landing on damp, rocky black earth.

Was this what Balm had experienced before sending the chest? Kira couldn’t imagine the head of the Gilead Commission going anywhere that would cause her to soil her expensive clothing, not to mention leave her psychically vulnerable. Unless this wasn’t a rewind of Balm’s last moment with the pendant, but something else, somewhere else.

Kira’s gaze traveled the room, though
room
was a generous designation. It was more like a chamber carved from basalt, the volcanic rock emitting a subtle sheen of magic. Dank, dark, lit only by a sliver of moonlight and the ambient magic, there was no way that this depressing chamber would be high on anyone’s must-see list.

A shadow detached itself from the gloom deeper in the chamber. Kira had an impression of a feminine form, a fall of hair as the magical lighting increased. “Balm?”

As soon as she uttered Balm’s name, Kira realized her mistake. The young woman had a passing resemblance to Balm, like a reflection on a shop window as the bus whizzes by. Instead of soft brown eyes that flashed to blue, the stranger’s eyes were completely golden yellow with fleeting flashes of black.

Kira’s hand immediately dropped to her Lightblade—or rather, where her Lightblade would have been if she’d been in her own dreamwalk. “You’re not Balm.”

“Took you long enough,” the woman said. “What gave it away?”

Kira pushed through the fear, reaching for sarcasm in self-defense. “Balm doesn’t look like a petulant teen whose parents took her phone privileges.”

“Then you should realize how dangerous and unpredictable a teenaged girl can be,” the young woman said, the temperature in the chamber dropping rapidly as she floated closer. “After all, you were barely a teen when you hurt your sister. You were still a teen when you got your handler Nico killed. And you certainly acted like a headstrong teen when you ran off by yourself and ended up killing all those people.”

“Shut up!” Yellow tinged Kira’s vision. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Don’t I?” She spun in a circle, a little girl playing. “Am I not Myshael, the Lady of Shadows? Does not the darkness belong to me?”

She spun to a stop in front of Kira, her eyes completely black. “Enig was my child. You do remember him, do you not? You gave him your power twice.”

“I never gave him my power,” Kira shot back. “He took it from me. He took Nico from me. He took my Lightblade from me.”

“He couldn’t take what you weren’t willing to give,” the young girl said in a lilting voice. “You wanted so much to be normal, even as you knew deep in your heart that you are not human and have never been. You wanted to be free of your power, and for what? To be like those sacks of flesh who have no idea of their potential? You needed to learn the error of your thinking. I was happy to teach it to you.”

“You?” Kira stumbled back a step. “You sent Enig after me? You interfered in my life?”

“Really, there’s no need to sound so shocked,” Myshael said, clucking her tongue. “Balm’s been interfering in your life since before you were born. But I suspect you’ll find that out soon enough.”

Kira put her hands to her head, trying to grasp the revelations she’d heard. The Lady of Shadows had blatantly admitted to meddling in Kira’s life. Kira knew Balm had attempted to direct her path several times, but to know that the head of Gilead had tried her hand at being a puppet master since before Kira’s birth was almost too much.

She stared at the female embodiment of Shadow, the very thing she’d been trained to destroy. She couldn’t trust the Lady’s word. Heck, she didn’t trust Balm most of the time. “Where is Balm? Why isn’t she here?”

Myshael smiled, an angelic child if not for the glowing yellow eyes and razor-sharp teeth that nearly split her face in half. “The Lady of Light can’t help you now. She’s doing all she can to help herself.”

Anger and fear grappled in Kira’s belly. “What the hell did you do to Balm?”

“Do not lay Balm’s actions at my feet. I merely capitalized on the situation that presented itself. How’s your wound, by the way?”

Kira’s hand drifted to her shoulder. “How do you know about that?”

Myshael changed form again, back to a teenager. “Set is my child. And so are you.”

Horror iced Kira’s back. “You are not my mother. My mother’s name is Ana.”

The young woman’s eyes burned citrine. “Is a mother one who incubates or one who educates and shapes? I did not carry you in my womb, Kira Solomon, but make no mistake—I definitely had a hand in creating you.”

The chamber’s chill air pressed down on Kira, seeping into her bones. “What do you want?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want joint custody.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Balm has had her time with you. Now I will have mine. Some of the best Lightchasers are former Shadowchasers.”

“Lightchasers? You have Lightchasers?”

Myshael gave a long-suffering sigh. “Balm’s curriculum has been woefully half-assed, I see. Tell me, Kira Solomon: what is Universal Balance?”

“I’m not playing your game.”

“I do enjoy games, especially when people are my playthings,” Myshael replied. “But in this, I expect an answer. Or is Gilead’s vaunted Shadowchaser training unable to live up to its own hype?”

Kira folded her arms. “Balance drives the Universe. Matter and antimatter. Good and evil. Action and reaction. Love and hate.”

“Good answer. Now, if the concept of Universal Balance is the foundation of existence, how can there be Shadowchasers without Lightchasers?”

Kira parted her lips to make a pithy retort, but no words came. Of course there were Lightchasers. It was so obvious, she felt foolish for not realizing it earlier, like during her training.

“What do Lightchasers chase?”

Myshael smiled. “Whatever I tell them to. Enig went after the Dagger of Kheferatum, and Marit convinced a Shadowchaser to steal the Vessel of Nun.”

“Yeah.” Kira sighed in mock sympathy. “That didn’t work out too well for them, did it?”

Myshael’s smile vanished, replaced with a terrible expression that kicked up a pang of fear in Kira’s chest. “Since you’ve managed to beat both of them, Set decided he would have his chance, though he slumbers still. And after I talked to Balm and Solis, I decided I would try my hand at bringing my recalcitrant daughter into the fold.”

Her mood shifted again, this time to eagerness. “So are you going to join the family? Set would like you to, and I know Marit really wants to see you again.”

“No.” Kira shuddered. “Not only no, but hell no. You and all your little minions are not my family. I belong to Ma’at, not Set. I’m not switching teams, not going to become a Lightchaser, and I’m sure as hell not going to take orders from you.”

Childlike laughter pealed through the chamber as Myshael clapped her hands. “Oh, you do have the strength of will of your family. Then again, perhaps it is sheer bravado. Or blind stupidity. Regardless, you will follow the path to its inevitable end, and you will come to heel.”

“You may have laid the path.” Kira’s voice seethed with anger and determination. “You and your sisters have definitely thrown obstacles onto it. But I choose whether or not I step onto it. I choose whether or not to sit down or keep moving forward. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Whatever machinations you and all the other gods have, you cannot trump Free Will. I will always have a choice, and that choice will be mine alone. Not yours, not Solis’s, not Balm’s. Mine.”

The Lady of Shadows rose into the air, her body suffused with the glowing yellow of Shadow magic. An invisible wind lifted her dark hair, swirling the long strands about her head. She floated to a stop before Kira. Kira stood immobile as Myshael pressed her index finger to Kira’s shoulder. Pain buckled her knees, but Myshael continued to prod her, her eyes glowing with her power.

With her free hand she cupped Kira’s cheek and leaned close. “You are a child of Chaos, my dearest one,” she whispered against Kira’s ear as she dug her fingers deeper into Kira’s shoulder. “That is why Set calls out to you in your dreams. You have already acted in my name and you will again, for it is your nature.”

Kira grit her teeth, fighting the pain that radiated from her shoulder. “Get. The hell. Out of my head!”

Myshael drew back. The immediate absence of pain had Kira gasping as she dropped to her hands and knees. “What makes you think we’re in your head?” Myshael asked.

“What?”

“Enjoy your trip down memory lane, my child. I’ll see you soon.”

The Lady of Shadows vanished.

At once the swirling nothingness returned, assaulting Kira’s senses. She tried to swim through it, tried to regain control of the vision, tried not to allow the meeting with the Lady of Shadows to throw her completely off-kilter.

She landed in the middle of a fight. Rather, she landed in the consciousness of a person fighting. The opponent glowed with the bright yellow of Shadow magic, a male Shadowling six and a half feet tall and all sinewy muscle.

The Shadowling threw a bolt of bright yellow light. She lifted her blade, blocking the blast. Her blade? No, not her dagger, but the pale blue glow denoted the weapon as a Lightblade.

Realization shook her to her core. She was in the body of another Shadowchaser. Her mother.

The Shadowling had a knife as well, a curving kukri suffused with a phosphorescent yellow glow. He was a Lightchaser.

The fight was quick, brutal, damaging to both sides. A blast of Shadow magic hit her mother directly on the forehead, sending her reeling. The world tilted as she fell. A dark, hulking shape loomed over her. A hand reached down, wrapped around her neck. The Shadowling squeezed, and the world went black …

She jerked up screaming. She should have been dead. Why wasn’t she dead?

Clothes torn, body bruised and aching. She tried to stand, but pain blossomed in her midsection instead.
Gods, no.

The Shadowling was still there, on his back, her Lightblade protruding from his chest. At least she’d killed him before he—before he—

Shrieking, she pulled her blade from the still carcass. Raising it high, she plunged it, again and again and again, into the Shadowling’s body. Screaming until her voice gave out, she stabbed him until her arms shook with the effort, until she couldn’t raise the dagger further. She fell onto her back as a cold rain began to fall, throat sore, body hurting, soul bruised. Staring up at the rain, she gathered her mental energy, sent out one call.
Balm!

The scene shifted. Now she was on a boat. Brilliant sapphire sky arched overhead, but she didn’t care. She was too busy being sick over the side as the ship steamed toward the familiar rocky coast, the stone citadel that stood in sharp relief against the sky. Not the way she expected to return to Santa Costa, but she was glad to be home, glad to be returning to Balm.

The boat glided to a stop at the dock. A woman waited at the end of the pier, beautiful, forever young. Balm, the head of the Gilead Commission, the one person she could always count on.

Balm ran to the boat as she disembarked, caught her as she stumbled. “Ana, are you all right?”

She leaned into Balm’s warm embrace and immediately felt better. She’d missed the sun-drenched smell of Balm’s hair. “Serena,” she whispered, “I’ve gotten myself into a spot of trouble.”

Balm reached out a hand, gently placed it on Ana’s protruding belly. “You should have come home earlier,” Balm said, her voice thick with emotion. “You shouldn’t have left in the first place!”

“You needed Chasers out in the world,” she reminded Balm. “It was selfish to stay here as long as I did, when I was needed out there.”

Balm pulled her close. “You were needed here too,” she whispered. She drew back, gathering herself into the picture of serene command. “But you are here now, and that is all that matters. Everything will be all right.”