Authors: M.J. Scott
Shadow Kin (10 page)
Slow deep breaths kept me focused as I navigated carefully through the room, trying to ensure that no one brushed against me. I longed for the cool gray of the shadow where, removed from the needs of flesh, I could think without pain clouding each breath. Where the brush of my clothes against my skin didn’t hurt. But no doubt Lucius had his spies throughout the assembled throng. They would be watching. He might even be watching from his aerie of an office, high above the crowds.
I needed time to think. To plan. I’d never managed to fall this far from his favor before. Worse, I’d never aroused his blood hunger. Prey indeed.
I fought the urge to shiver as the memory of the look in Lucius’ eyes as I left returned. There was nothing good in that expression. He had always viewed me as a possession but a worthy one. What if I was now merely food?
No. I would not be. I would find a way to deter him.
Lucius had released me without giving me a target, so I assumed I was free. I wasn’t going to leave—that would merely give him a reason to find fault if he changed his mind and I couldn’t be summoned at a snap of his fingers.
So free but trapped here at Halcyon amongst the Nightseekers and the Blood. The masses amused themselves with the pseudocourtly intricacies of the Blood dances, but no one would ask me. No one ever asked me. It was no great loss. I didn’t dance even though I enjoyed the music. Tonight, my set-apart status was a blessing. I doubted I’d be able to stand the length of a set even if Lucius himself ordered me to take the floor.
My gaze fell on the curtained alcoves lining the walls. Private little spaces for couples and small groups to steal away and have sex or feed or partake in any number of other activities.
A perfect lair to lie low in for a while and catch my breath. There I could shadow, gain some relief from the pain and shock riding my body, and gather my thoughts. I scanned the row, looking for any that didn’t have a privacy lamp glowing red above the door. There. One almost on the end of the row was still dark
I sped up my efforts to get through the crowd, enduring the resulting small bumps and jostles with gritted teeth. As I reached the alcove, someone cannoned into me from behind. Pain flared and my temper along with it. I turned to see who was seeking an early death, only to find myself staring into an all-too-familiar pair of sky blue eyes.
“You!” My brain froze, then thawed, ratcheting into gear. I grabbed his arm and yanked him into the alcove, slapping the privacy lamp into life and triggering the spell for the aural shields a second after that. “What, in the name of hell, are you doing here?” He obviously had a death wish.
Simon—no, the
sunmage
; that was safer—looked slightly stunned. His hair was darkened by dye or magic to a shade near to black, but that only made his eyes a brighter blue against golden skin.
sunmage
; that was safer—looked slightly stunned. His hair was darkened by dye or magic to a shade near to black, but that only made his eyes a brighter blue against golden skin.
He smiled, his face filling with warmth in the dim light. “I came to return your dagger.”
My hand dropped to the empty space I’d been all too aware of all night. “And what makes you think I won’t just use it on you?”
“You didn’t kill me yesterday.”
He was so full of life and confidence part of me wanted to slap him. But another part wanted to let him show me how to feel like that. That part made me want to slap myself. Survival. That was the business I was in. The sunmage wasn’t an option. “That was yesterday. Perhaps I’ve been made to see the error in my ways.”
He frowned and stepped closer. “Did he hurt you?”
I moved out of reach. “No. But you should leave before he hurts you.” I watched him as I lied. I didn’t know a lot about human healers. Could he sense my pain? Smell the fear sweat still dampening my clothes? I didn’t want his concern. Or his help. Or his death on my conscience.
He needed to leave.
I looked around. Some of the alcoves had discreet exits to the rear, doors hidden in the velvet drapery, to facilitate covert meetings and departures. This did not appear to be one of them. Simon would have to leave the same way he’d entered. I gestured to the door. “Go.”
“Don’t you want your knife, then?”
“Dagger,” I corrected him, feeling its lack like I’d lost a hand rather than a mere weapon.
“Is there a difference?”
The idiot doesn’t even know a knife from a dagger
. He stood there, hands in the pockets of ridiculous black leather trousers, preposterous black hair rumpled, watching me with a casual air as though he wasn’t standing in the middle of enemy territory. He even had a black metal disc—the latest fashion amongst the Nightseekers—hanging from a cord at his throat. He probably thought he blended in.
. He stood there, hands in the pockets of ridiculous black leather trousers, preposterous black hair rumpled, watching me with a casual air as though he wasn’t standing in the middle of enemy territory. He even had a black metal disc—the latest fashion amongst the Nightseekers—hanging from a cord at his throat. He probably thought he blended in.
He shouldn’t have been let out on his own, sunmage or no.
And I should not be feeling a distinct urge to move nearer to him. The alcove smelled like sex and blood, both vampire and human. Enough, it seemed, despite the beating, to set my hated hunger prowling again. Simon’s scent cut a warm clean note through the musk.
It seemed to promise safety and ease and, yes, pleasure.
None of which was real. Anything I felt was due to Lucius’ blood still riding me. Nothing more. An illusion that I would fight, as always.
Anger rose. It was safer than the desire and let me forget the pain. “Do you care?” I asked, not troubling to keep the edge from my voice.
“Do you?”
I hissed and ripped one of the stilettos from the sheath at my thigh. One quick move and its point lay against his throat, precisely at the place where his skin pulsed with the beat of his heart. “This is a stiletto,” I said. “Thin. Sharp.”
I increased the pressure. Hard enough to make him see I was serious but not enough to cut him. Not yet anyway. I didn’t know if the blood of a sunmage would smell different from a normal human’s—different enough to stand out in the stink of human blood that filled the Assembly and call attention to us—but I didn’t want to risk it. “This has a point. My dagger has two edges. A knife typically has one.”
“And you?” he said casually as though my blade wasn’t testing his skin. “How many edges do you have?”
His eyes glinted at me. Humor and something else lurked in the blue. Something that called to me. The steady beat of his pulse vibrated up the blade. I wanted to feel that beat skin to skin.
Not real. I shook my head, trying to free myself of the illusion. It didn’t exactly work. My hand trembled slightly against the stiletto. Though maybe that was just from the pain in my arm. “Believe me, Simon DuCaine, you do not want to find out.”
“Oh, but I do,” Simon said. Then his eyes narrowed. “You know my name.”
“Yes. Not that it makes any difference to me.” I tightened my grip, increased the pressure ever so slightly. If I were smart, I would do it. Plunge the blade into his neck. Spill his blood all over this room. Complete my mission and redeem myself.
Become the weapon again, not the prey.
My hand clenched tighter.
Do it. Do it
now
!
Do it. Do it
now
!
The words shrieked in my brain. I felt like a chasm had opened beneath my feet, miles deep. If I took this step, if I killed this man whose name came so easily to my tongue, this man who had done nothing to me but offer kindness, offer choice, then I couldn’t return. I would fall. I would be Lucius’ creature completely. Nothing but darkness.
As soulless as the Fae termed me.
But I would be alive.
“If you’re going to do it, make it fast,” he said, voice still completely calm.
I snarled, not liking that he knew what I was thinking. “Tell me why I shouldn’t?”
“Because you’re not who you think you are. You’re not who
they
think you are,” he said. There was no lightness in his tone now. “You can be more.”
they
think you are,” he said. There was no lightness in his tone now. “You can be more.”
I snarled again. But I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the one who killed him. I had always offered Lucius my obedience for his protection, for survival. But something had shifted between us tonight, perhaps shifted in me as well. And right now the thought of doing his will was unbearable.
I stepped away and sheathed my stiletto, balling my fists. My hands still trembled and I knew I couldn’t hide my hurts much longer. My vision was growing blurred at the edges and my head pounded. I had to get him out of Halcyon. Out of my head. “Do not think you know me, sunmage.” I was careful not to use his name again.
“Does anyone, Shadow?”
I ignored the question. “If you want to survive another night, I suggest you give me my dagger and leave.”
He shrugged, then bent and slid my dagger free of his boot. I wanted to reach for it but forced my hand to remain where it rested on my hip.
“I’m surprised the guards at the door didn’t take it from me.”
“They would sense no silver.”
“And a knife with no silver can do no harm here?”
“At night, here in a Blood Assembly, you would need to be very, very lucky to harm a Blood or Beast Kind with a knife made of anything else.” Not with just a human’s strength anyway.
“My brother always said I was lucky.”
“Did he mention stupid too?” I asked, watching the blade. I wanted it. But I did not want to have to take it from him. Hurt as I was, I wasn’t at all sure I could.
He grinned, the smile lighting his face the way it always did. “Frequently.”
I looked away. No letting myself be caught by the light and warmth in his face. “He must be a good judge of character.”
“He likes to think so.” He tilted the dagger in his hand, turning it to catch the light. “Not silver. Iron perhaps? Does he set you to hunt the Fae?”
“Most of the Fae have good sense enough not to anger Lucius.”
“Most? Do you hunt your own kind, then?” The dagger glinted in the lamplight as he twisted it.
I watched the dagger. In truth it was neither silver nor iron despite its color. No, it was a Fae-wrought thing, gold and other metals shaped by their magics, stronger than any human alloy. Lucius had given it to me. Another way of taunting the Fae. “The Fae would say I am none of theirs.”
“So you do hunt them?”
I met that clear blue gaze. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t know,” he said, truth ringing in the words.
“If I don’t need a silver knife to hunt Blood or Beast Kind, what makes you think I would need iron for the Fae?”
I wanted to unsettle him, shake off some of that confidence. Maybe then he wouldn’t pull at me so.
“From all I hear, the Fae are hard to kill.”
I smiled, baring my teeth. “For a human perhaps.” Let him think what he would of that. In truth, Lucius had never set me on one of the Veiled World. The few of them weak enough to need to fear him were not stupid enough to cross him. And in truth the relations between the Fae and the Blood were tied and cross-tied with history and a healthy respect for the power of the Veiled World.
Simon stayed silent. He didn’t make any move to pass me the dagger. Perhaps I should take it from him after all. I could hear his heartbeat, not entirely at a normal pace for all his air of ease and bravado.
“A waltz,” he said finally.
“Pardon?”
He cocked his head toward the door. “They’re playing a waltz.”
The aural shields kept our conversation private but the sounds of the Assembly were still audible. “Yes. Lucius prefers waltzes.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “Strange. So do I.”
I didn’t want to think about him dancing. Moving with someone, free and clear beneath a sunny sky. “Perhaps you should ask him to partner you. Since you seem intent on destruction.”
“I’ve survived thus far.”
“Then you shouldn’t continue to tempt fate. Something tells me the Lady won’t keep rolling in your favor.”
His knuckles whitened against the dagger’s haft. “Has he asked you to try again?”
“Why would I tell you if he had?” I tried to sound menacing. I wanted him to
go
. The longer we stood here, the more I struggled with the pain and the need. I wanted to either sink to the floor or fall into his arms. And would rather die before I let myself do either.
go
. The longer we stood here, the more I struggled with the pain and the need. I wanted to either sink to the floor or fall into his arms. And would rather die before I let myself do either.
“Would you do it? Kill me?”
No, was the immediate protest that sprang to mind. But it would be completely foolish to let him see that. “I generally do as Lucius wishes.”
“Why?”
“Because I am his.”
His face darkened and I had to set my teeth against the urge to try to bring back the smile instead.
“People don’t belong to anyone.” Certainty and something close to anger deepened his voice.
“I’m not a person—”
“Not a human,” he corrected.
And why, by the lords of hell, had I been unlucky enough to cross paths with one of the few humans who could make that distinction? “No,” I agreed. “Regardless. I don’t live in your world. Trust me, in the Night World the rules are different.”
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