Shadow Fall (23 page)

“Kira doesn’t have Shadow magic, Zoo,” Khefar said evenly, even as he edged between them. “You know this.”

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Kira?” Something ugly crossed Zoo’s face. “Wynne’s perfectly healthy. She doesn’t do drugs. So you tell me: what’s left?”

“Magic,” she said, her voice bare.

Khefar’s shock quickly turned to anger. “Are you accusing Kira?” he demanded. “That’s as absurd as accusing you!”

Zoo didn’t take his eyes from Kira. “My magic requires a delivery mechanism, and leaves trace amounts behind. It’s a clear enough signature for someone with the skills to look. Kira’s magic doesn’t need anything like that, does it?”

Kira’s face turned ashen. “No. I touch something.”

“Yeah.” Something ugly passed across Zoo’s face. “You touch someone and you can drop a person like a hot potato.”

Why in the world wasn’t Kira defending herself? Zoo’s accusations were completely baseless and outrageous, yet she simply stood there as if they were discussing the weather. “We all know about Kira’s touch ability. Again, I say that it is not of Shadow.”

“I know what I saw.” The witch clenched his fists. “I know how you were in the cemetery, Light and Shadow fighting inside you. I know how you were after that Fallen stabbed you with that dagger full of Chaos magic. And I saw how you were after you came back from that other place.”

He rubbed a hand over his owl tattoo again. “You’re different, Kira. You can’t say that you’re not.”

“Of course she’s different!” Khefar exclaimed before Kira could speak. “No human can go through what she did and emerge unscathed!”

“You’re right,” the other man said. He flicked his eyes at Kira. “No human could. But Kira did. I know what I saw. I know I saw power riding her, Light and Shadow twirling around her like strands of DNA. The power was waiting for her to make a choice. And she chose to keep all of it.”

“What is the point of all this, and what does it have to do with Wynne?” Khefar demanded. The witch needed to remember why they were gathered at the hospital in the first place.

“She’s the one.” Zoo leveled a finger at Kira. There was something in his stance, something foreign and dangerous. Something so unlike the affable witch Khefar was familiar with.

Khefar blocked him. “You need to step back, witch,” he warned. “This is not the place.”

The other man’s breathing quickened as his tension increased. Khefar had seen too many young men on the battlefield do the same thing, before they acted in a way that cost someone their limb, pride, or life. “Stand down, soldier,” he ordered. “Think of how Wynne would feel about this if she saw it.”

It was the right thing to say. Zoo stepped back, his ears still red with his anger. “She talked to Wynne about her faith, and religion and belief. Kira’s the last person Wynne had a serious conversation with, and now she’s in a coma.”

Kira gave a soft groan, as if she’d been punched in the stomach and was trying not to show how much it hurt. Khefar saw red. “That is enough! This is Kira you accuse! She cares for Wynne as she would her own flesh and blood.”

“‘Her own flesh and blood,’” Zoo sneered. “You obviously don’t know what happened to her sister, otherwise you’d make a different argument.”

Kira flinched again.
Enough of this,
Khefar thought. “Don’t you see what you’re doing to her? She’s your friend—”

“And that’s my wife!” Zoo stabbed a finger in the direction of the private rooms. “There’s no contest!”

Khefar took a step forward. “You understand little—”

“Khefar.”

The soft voice sliced through his anger with the quick precision of a laser cutter. He turned to look at Kira, and what he saw etched on her face almost broke his heart.

No anger, no Shadow, animated her features. Instead he saw a deep, crushing sadness that smothered the light in her eyes and wiped all expression from her face.

“It’s the right choice,” she finally said, referring to Zoo. “We’d do the same thing. We’ve both done the same thing.”

Khefar bit his tongue. He’d done far worse when his wife and children were butchered. He’d laid waste to an entire village, then proceeded to destroy sixty-four thousand lives.

“I’ll get to the bottom of this, Zoo.” Kira’s voice sounded wooden, as if she’d pressed down hard to squeeze every drop of emotion out of her tone. “I’ll make it right, I swear.”

“How are you going to do that?” Zoo demanded, tears clogging his throat. “The only way you can make this right is by bringing my wife back.”

“I said I’ll make it right.” Kira spat out every word like a broken tooth. “I’ll find out what happened and I’ll make sure it never happens again.”

Zoo didn’t appear mollified. “And if you find out you’re the cause? What are you going to do then?”

Kira gave her friend a look so devoid of emotion that she might have been someone else. Something else. “If I am the cause, the Medjay will fulfill his promise to me.”

“What sort of promise?” Zoo asked, some of the heat leaching out of his voice.

Kira turned to Khefar. “Tell him,” she said, her voice whisper-soft. “Tell him what you promised to me.”

Khefar folded his arms across his chest. He didn’t want to tell Zoo anything, much less the vow he’d made. If Marlowe didn’t believe Kira’s innocence based on their friendship, he didn’t deserve to know the details of the pact Khefar and made with her.

“Khefar, please.”

He bore down on Zoo, fighting to rein in his anger. “Do you know why I’m still here? Do you?”

“It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that you’re falling in love with her,” Zoo said dismissively. “So?”

Khefar gritted his teeth. He didn’t know if he was falling in love with Kira or not, but he’d be damned if he’d let the other man treat it as a casual thing. “I have lived four thousand years of penance because I chose revenge for losing my wife and children. Do not think to trivialize my sentiments or what I will do because of them.”

“Fine. But you can’t expect me to believe that you’re hanging around because you like helping Kira with her Shadowchasing.”

“I don’t care what you believe,” Khefar said. “My reasons are my own, and I don’t need to share them with you. But since Kira wants you to know, I’ll tell you the primary reason why I’m still here. I’m her fail-safe.”

Confusion stirred the anger on Zoo’s face. “Failsafe?”

“It means that I am here to protect Kira from herself, to help her fight Shadow and at least stay balanced. If she doesn’t, if she slides into Shadow, I will unmake her.”

“Unmake her? What is that supposed to mean?”

Khefar glared at the other man, angry at the emotional damage he’d done to Kira, hating that he had to reveal the details of this awful vow. “If Kira becomes the very thing that she hunts, I will free the Dagger of Kheferatum and call its true power. I will unmake her body and her soul.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” the witch said, horror driving the last of his anger away. “You
couldn’t
do that.”

“You have no idea what I could do,” Khefar said, his voice soft. “You have no idea what I have done to ease my burden and save a soul. I have sworn a vow to Kira, to honor her request to ensure that she is never used for Shadow.”

Zoo’s mouth dropped open. “She asked you to do this—to kill her?”

Kira didn’t bat an eye. She stared her friend down. “The Medjay has sworn that if I am too far gone into Shadow, if I become irredeemably Unbalanced, he will call on the true power of the Dagger of Kheferatum, and unmake me.”

“Unmake you. You’d actually let him kill you.”

“Oh, it’s much more permanent than killing.” Something lit Kira’s expression. Khefar would have thought it humor, except there was nothing funny about their discussion. “Unmaking means Khefar will take my life and erase my soul. No redemption, no rebirth, no afterlife.”

“That which you know as Kira Solomon would cease to exist,” Khefar added. “No magic, no matter how powerful, would be able to bring her back. Not even the gods could re-create her. It would truly be a fate worse than death.”

Kira brushed her hands together, as if wiping them off. “Kira go
poof
.”

Zoo scrubbed a hand over his head again. “Gods.”

She threw back her head, her shoulders straight, her gaze hard. “Will this satisfy?”

“What? You’re asking me to be okay with you dying?”

“Come on, Zoo,” Kira pulled her lips back from her teeth in a semblance of a smile. “You were out for my blood when we arrived. Don’t wimp out on me now. If we find out that I’m guilty, Khefar will be my executioner. So answer me, Zeroun Marlowe: will this satisfy?”

The witch seemed to realize that he’d gone too far. Good, Khefar thought. Still it was too late, far too late, to retreat. The simple act of accusing Kira of something so heinous was enough to push her further into Shadow. If one of the people you loved and trusted above all others no longer had your back, what were you left with?

“I—I guess so.”

“Good.” Kira nodded curtly. “Now, I need something of Wynne’s.”

Wariness lit his features again. “Like what? What for?”

Kira sighed. “You know how this works, Zoo. If you want me to find out what happened to Wynne, I need to touch something of hers, something she had on at the time. Even better if it’s a piece of jewelry—something she’s worn a lot. It’ll help me get a clearer picture of the situation. A necklace would be good.”

“I made a pendant for her, black tourmaline, rose quartz, and obsidian. She wears it all the time. It was supposed to protect her.” His face crumpled.

“Mr. Marlowe?” A nurse entered the room. “We’ve got your wife settled in her private room. You can go to her now. There’s also room for you to rest and refresh yourself.”

Zoo gathered himself, took a deep breath. “Okay. Th-thank you.”

He prepared to follow the nurse, paused. “I’ll bring the pendant to you in a little while,” he said quietly, not looking at either of them. With that, he turned and followed the nurse.

K
hefar faced her. “Kira—”

“Not now,” she interrupted softly, throwing a hand up. She wasn’t ready to talk about Zoo and his accusations. She doubted she’d ever be ready, but right then and there certainly wasn’t the time. Not with the wound still fresh and hemorrhaging.

Khefar wouldn’t let it go. “If he brings back that pendant, it’s going to be charged with his emotions as well as Wynne’s, right?”

“Probably.” Definitely. The necklace from Balm’s box had almost knocked her unconscious. She could still feel the aftereffects of it rippling through her like a stone dropped in a pond. The dagger from the puzzle box—she still didn’t know what it had done to her, only that something had happened—hadn’t been used in more than twenty-five years. Wynne’s pendant—a protection amulet—held in Zoo’s hand in his current emotional state was sure to leave a mental scar.

“His anger burns fiercely,” Khefar said, stating the obvious. “Are you going to be able to handle experiencing it yourself?”

“Probably not.” She hunched down in her long overcoat, still stinging from Zoo’s reaction. It was one thing to see Zoo’s anger; it would be quite another to feel it. She didn’t know how bad trying to read Wynne’s pendant would be or how she’d feel about it afterward. Added to that was the fact that she needed to uncover what had happened to Wynne to send her into a coma. Experiencing Zoo’s fury would be hard; experiencing Wynne’s attack would be almost too much.

“I’m not going to try to read Wynne’s pendant here,” she finally said. “Besides, I really don’t want to be hanging around when Sanchez shows up. She’s only going to stoke Zoo’s anger and make a bad situation worse.”

“Ch-chaser?”

The voice was so soft and timid that Kira almost missed it. She spun to the entryway, one hand going for her blade. A dark-skinned male with shiny straight hair the color of his skin stood in the doorway. He wore the same pale blue scrubs that a large part of the hospital staff wore. The security badge pinned to his shirt displayed his image and the name
JESSEN
.

“Yes?” Kira’s hand dropped from her blade as she pasted on a polite expression. The guy was a Shadowling but if he’d wanted to attack, he would have already. Besides, she was sure Khefar had her back.

Khefar moved in front of her. “Who are you, and what do you want with the Chaser?” he demanded.

“I call myself Jessen,” the young man replied, glancing at Kira before dropping his eyes to the floor. “It’s an honor to meet you, Chaser Solomon. I have this job because of Bale.”

Ah-ha. “Hello, Jessen.” Kira turned to Khefar. “You met Bale at the fund-raiser, remember? Jessen’s introduction lets me know that he’s part of Bale’s local clan and under his protection. He wouldn’t have mentioned the banaranjan otherwise.”

Khefar nodded, his expression still dour. “I remember him.”

Kira looked at Jessen. “Is there something that I can do for you, Jessen? I’m in the middle of something here.”

“Bale sends you his greetings, Chaser Solomon, but also told me I should speak to you. He said that you would need the information.”

“What sort of information?”

Jessen gestured them to the far corner of the waiting room. He leaned close to Kira and said, “What has happened to your friend has happened to other humans.”

“How many? How do you know this?”

The male banaranjan covered his eyes, bowed low. “I do not mean to anger you, Chaser. I work in this wing of the hospital, and I hear things. We have had eight humans brought here in as many days. All of them are comatose, all of them without any medical basis. Your friend makes nine.”

A momentary guilty rush of relief. She couldn’t have harmed Wynne and these others. She shook off the thought, then focused on the banaranjan’s words. Nine people in comas. “Do you know if there are others? Maybe victims at other hospitals?”

Jessen darted another glance at her. “I’ve contacted a couple of friends at other area hospitals, but I haven’t heard back from them.”

She should have guessed that banaranjans would work in hospitals. These Shadowlings fed off adrenaline and usually worked in athletics of some type. The adrenaline spilling into emergency rooms would be enough to feed two or three banaranjans in their prime.