Shadow Fall (21 page)

“You’re right, it
is
your dream. Do you have peace of mind?”

“I’m trying, but it’s hard. Being able to be here like this, and talk to you like this, helps.”

“Good.” Comstock leaned back. “Then I’m glad a part of me was able to stay behind to help you.”

She stared at him. In this dream that wasn’t a dream, he looked much as he had when he was alive, a dapper Englishman in his sixties who liked few objects less than fifty years old.

“How did you do this, Bernie? You say you’re a construct of yourself, me, and my magic. Your solicitor swears that you didn’t barter your soul. That leaves you as being some sort of spirit, but you don’t manifest like other ghosts.”

“If you want me to manifest like a ghost, I surely can do that,” Comstock told her. “Though I don’t believe you really want me popping into your house unannounced, do you?”

Her cheeks heated. Since she and Khefar had sexually tested almost every flat surface in her house, except for her altar room, she was even less inclined to have people dropping by, even ghostly ones.

“You can do that?” she asked. “Manifest independently, I mean.”

“Yes. Among other things.” He concentrated on placing his teacup back in its saucer, a gesture she knew meant he had something he wanted to say, but needed time to find the words to say it.

“What’s on your mind, Bernie? I know it’s usually me reaching out to you to answer some burning question or to help me feel better, but today I feel like it’s the other way around.”

“It is. I have a couple of things I want to share with you.”

Answers, she hoped, but it didn’t seem like it. “Like what?”

“Among my effects is a pair of spectacles. You should keep them with you from now on.”

“Why?”

“They will help how others see you.”

“Kind of a Superman sort of thing, a secret identity?” She shook her head. “No, thanks, Bernie. If I suddenly start showing up with glasses on, I’ll get more questions, not fewer. I don’t really give a damn how other people see me anyway. It’s not like I’m trying to be Miss Congeniality.”

“That’s my girl. Prickly as a porcupine.” His smile faded, seriousness pushing the mirth from his expression. “The problem is not your personality, Kira, but your eyes. Especially when you channel Shadow magic.”

The teacup wobbled in her hands. “You’re saying I’m going to keep experiencing it—Shadow magic. I’m not going to be able to get rid of it.”

“Do you plan to rid yourself of your arm, or your right eye?” Comstock asked. “Shadow magic is a part of you. Use it as you use your anger and your quest for truth.”

“It’s wrong,” she protested, shocked that Comstock would suggest she actually use Shadow magic. “It’s evil.”

“It’s evil if there’s no rhyme or reason, if it is indiscriminately used,” Comstock corrected. “You have guns. You have your Lightblade. You’ve used both. Does that make you evil?”

She didn’t want to answer the question because any answer she gave would be wrong.

Comstock sighed. “All right, then, how about this example? A thief with a gun breaks into a person’s home. The homeowner also has a gun. Who’s evil?”

“The thief, of course.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s trying to take something that doesn’t belong to him, and he’ll use the gun to do it,” she answered. “The homeowner is defending what is his.”

Comstock nodded. “So it’s not the weapon that’s evil, it’s the intent behind its use.”

Kira stared at her mentor, finding it hard not to mistrust him. Considering his construct, she’d also be distrusting herself. “I feel like you’re trying to trick me, Bernie, and I don’t know why.”

“Kira.” Now he sounded like himself, lecturing and admonishing simultaneously. “I’m not trying to trick you, dear girl. I’m trying to educate and advise you. That is my duty as a mentor, and that is why you come talk to me. Ask yourself honestly, have I ever made you do something that you did not want to do?”

“No.”

He leaned forward. “Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?”

“Besides not telling me that you knew about my Shadowchasing, since you were my handler?”

He smiled, sad at the edges. “Besides that.”

“No.”

He waved his hand about the room. Vision and reality slid across each other before fading back to the confines of her office. “Old men often have regrets. You already know how much I regret not sharing my association with the Gilead Commission with you. There is a reason for that, which is the same reason why I joined the Commission in the first place.”

“What reason is that? Access to their extensive database?”

Comstock went glassy-eyed. “The Gilead archives are a wonder to behold, especially for someone who loves knowledge as much as I do. However, there were two things I loved more: my dearest wife, and you.”

“You joined Gilead because you loved me. And you kept that knowledge from me for the same reason.” Kira snorted. “You realize that doesn’t make a lick of sense, right?”

“Whether you believe me or not, I took my role as your handler very seriously. More than that, I felt as if I had become your guardian. As such, your best interests were always my focus, whether that meant making you the best archaeologist, the best Chaser, or the best person you could be. Or all three. Ensuring that you are the best means that you don’t get an easy path.”

She laughed. “You’re right about that. Nothing about my life has ever been easy. I don’t think I’d trust it if it were.”

“Of course not,” he agreed, his eyes crinkling at the edges. Then he sobered. “Becoming your handler gave me more means to protect you than a lowly professor had at his disposal,” Comstock told her. “Joining Gilead gave me access to thousands of years of history, but also, I’d hoped, clues to who your parents were.”

Kira stared at Comstock, shocked. “You were looking for my parents?”

He nodded. “I knew that was important to you. I also knew that your own search had yielded limited results. What I didn’t know was whether that was by design or if the information simply wasn’t there. So I had to use other means to gather the information I sought.”

His hands flanked the puzzle box on her desk.” Part of the reason that the Dagger of Kheferatum came to me is because I was doing research into who your parents possibly were.”

Kira recoiled in her seat. “You are not going to tell me that Khefar is somehow connected to my parents!”

“No, no, I wouldn’t have kept that from you. However, before the Dagger of Kheferatum came into my possession, I received another.”

His fingers danced atop the lid of a fruitwood box, tapping out a rhythm along the carved pattern, pushing parts of it flat into the surface. The lid opened with an almost inaudible snick. After opening the lid, he turned the box toward her.

A first glance, it was simply a knife, its design obviously influenced by the Indo-Persian fighting blade styles. The longer she looked at it, the more she realized it was anything but a simple weapon. The blade was a dark charcoal gray, almost black, the metal swirling with sheens of silvery-copper etching. Brass studs secured the grip, which looked to be made of some type of bone.

“I know this blade,” she said, her voice slow.

“Yes, you do,” Bernie said. “Now.”

Then it hit her. “I saw this, when I touched my mother’s locket. This is the dagger the Shadowling had, the Lightchaser who attacked my mother.”

“When it first came into my possession I didn’t know its significance, not for sure,” Comstock told her. “All I knew was that it had belonged to a Shadowling who was killed while fighting a female Shadowchaser, and had been confiscated by the Gilead team that came to retrieve her. My intention was to bring this one to you, but then the Dagger of Kheferatum fell into my hands and I thought it the more significant discovery.”

“More significant. A dagger that can destroy the world, or a blade that destroyed my world.” She looked at her mentor. “You went through a lot of trouble getting this. I know Gilead London had some serious security issues, but I can’t imagine it was easy for you to get this Lightchaser’s dagger out of whatever Gilead storage facility it was in.”

“It wasn’t. I had help.” He didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t have to. Kira knew the Commission stored a wide variety of artifacts acquired during its long existence. Some were stored in trap vaults on Santa Costa, others in various inaccessible places around the world. The secretive Commissioners were reputedly the only ones who knew the location of all the vaults, or how to get to them.

“How were you able to do all of this?” she asked, which was a much safer question than asking why her mentor wanted her to have a Lightchaser’s dagger.

Comstock’s expression closed so definitively that it was so hard to remember he was dead. “I told you, I had help.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that, Bernie,” she pressed. “As I said before, your lawyer told me that you didn’t sell your soul, but that’s all he told me.”

Irritation crossed his features. “My barrister shouldn’t have told you that much.”

“Considering that I was grieving, pissed, and sitting across from a demon, you should be
glad
he told me that much.”

She stretched a hand across the desk to him. “Bernie, please. I really want to be sure that your afterlife is okay. You’ve done so much for me, alive and dead, but if it cost you your soul—”

“Kira.” His fingers hovered over hers. “Put your mind at ease. I didn’t sell my soul to anyone.”

“Okay.” She slumped back into the plush chair. She couldn’t help being worried even as she appreciated the help from beyond. “So you didn’t do any soul-bartering. You still used some pretty powerful magic. For my own curiosity as much as my peace of mind, I’d like to know how you were able to bring these daggers with you and how you’re able to manifest as you do.”

“I acquired the assistance of a shaman and his wife,” Bernie finally said after a long silence. “They practice Balance Magic.”

“Balance Magic. Why does that sound familiar?”

Bernie smiled. “Probably because I found a reference to it in an old manuscript in Gilead’s archives, took it, and left it stacked with some books I’d asked you to catalog for the antiques shop.”

“Of course. Seeing as how I’ve never met a book I didn’t like, I naturally flipped through it,” Kira said wryly. “I think I also ran across something about it while reading through the massive library on Santa Costa. Something about using a fusion of Light and Shadow magic to power an intent. No one’s practiced it for decades, if not centuries, if Gilead’s records are anything to go by.”

“No one practices Balance Magic openly anymore,” Bernie corrected her. “Gilead seems to have a problem with anything or anyone that hints of Shadow.”

Kira flinched.

“I’m sorry, Kira, but you know it as well as I do,” Bernie insisted. “The Commission distrusts anything that isn’t sourced from Light even though they’ve been around long enough to know that there are a variety of shades of gray. Balm has done what she could to suppress the other half of your nature, all but stamping it out. Yet there are others like you, people who are of both Light and Shadow, people who walk in the gray space between.”

“Which explains why Solis exists, I suppose,” Kira said, trying to straighten everything out in her head. “So this shaman and his wife are essentially gray witches of some sort?”

“The shaman is of Light and his wife, who is a powerful magician in her own right, is born of Shadow,” Bernie explained. “They have also become Adepts in each other’s native magic.”

A headache began to buzz between her temples, her third eye struggling to see clearly through what she thought she knew to what she was learning now. “You mean the Shadow-born is a Light Adept. And the Light shaman channels Chaos magic.”

Her mentor nodded again. “They combine their innate magic with their Adept skills for more powerful works, creating Balance magic.”

“I can see why Gilead would have a problem with people having this sort of power. If these two can fuse parts of your essence to your personal objects, who knows what else they can do.”

“Help me find that, for one,” Comstock said, gesturing to the Shadowblade.

Kira eyed the dagger warily. She didn’t believe it could move independently, but she had good reason to mistrust daggers not her own. “So what do you expect me to do with it?”

“It’s yours, Kira. It is yours as surely as your mother’s locket and her Lightblade are yours. I suspect that Balm kept your mother’s Lightblade for herself, otherwise I would have secured that for you as well.”

“Why?”

He came around the desk, gathered her hands in his. “Because you are who you are, Kira. You have to be able to explore that. After learning what you can, you should accept your truth.”

“What truth is that?” she asked, though she already knew.

“Your truth is that you are a child of Light
and
a child of Shadow. You are an excellent Shadowchaser. However, I have no doubt that should you choose to be, you’d make an excellent Lightchaser.”

“Is that what you think I should do?” she asked, shocked. “Turn my back on everything I know, everything I am, and become Shadow?”

“Everything you know and everything you are isn’t Light alone, Kira. You are half of each. You are both. What you decide to do about it is your choice.”

He squeezed her hands. “Never forget that. Others may think they control you, others may think they own you. What they seem to forget, however, is that you have Free Will, and in the end, you are the one who will decide what you are to be. Not your parents, not Balm, not Solis, not Myshael, not Ma’at or Set. Not even me. It is, and has always been, up to you.”

“So I’m going to have to make a choice. A choice that will set my path and decide my fate, and it will all be up to me, huh?” Figures. When it was time to stand, one usually stood alone.

Comstock cocked his head. “Hasn’t that always been your path, Kira? Stubbornly forging your own way, blazing a trail through the underbrush when there’s a perfectly good road beside you?”

“I’m not that bad,” she retorted. “Okay, maybe I am, but not without good reason.”