Shadow Touched (23 page)

Ellie fitted her body to his, arms around his neck. “Not so clumsy anymore, though. I’ve seen your moves.”

God, how she loved him.

“We’ve all had to learn to fight,” he said. “Even the nerds.”

His expression shifted ever so slightly back to dismay and anger, a whisper of violence beneath the surface of the mild-mannered scientist, who hadn’t played any of his video games in at least two months. Rarely laughed.

“Ellie, I—” His hands had grasped her hips, but not to pull her closer, to push her away, which was not only unacceptable, but also would set a very dangerous precedent when they needed each other more than ever.

Her shadow was in motion, but the rest of her was too—mind, body, and soul; she would
make
him forget for a little while what troubled him. She would be his refuge. That’s what her diamond ring was supposed to signify, wasn’t it?

Where Ellie would’ve used a softer approach, her shadow was ready to fight. By now she trusted those instincts and followed where her shadow, not her mind, led.

Before he could push her back, Ellie leaned in and bit him where his shoulder met his neck. He was mid-exclamation when her hand skated up under his shirt. She scratched him with her nails down his pecs—hard and demanding—so he could feel something other than whatever weighed down his heart, which belonged to her. Her free hand went possessively to his groin, which hardened under her palm.

The anger in his eyes came into sharp focus—
good
—all his emotion now on the surface, not tucked under his skin, where it could only burn him.

A deft, possessive stroke broke him.

Near growling, Cam lifted her and turned to roughly pin her against the front door. She relished the feeling of his body pressing against her—she needed an escape just as badly as he did. The magic in his blood made him extra strong, so while he held her aloft with one arm, he unfastened his pants with the other. With a hard tug at the waist of her sweatpants, the cotton fell. She brought her knees up just as he thrust, in perfect synchronicity.

She locked her heels behind him. Not getting away. Joined—and her ring meant forever.

The door shuddered in its frame each time he drove into her. She held him tight around his shoulders, savage in her own right. Her shadow was dimly aware that someone had stalled in the corridor outside their suite, probably snickering at the telltale rhythm with which Cam rode her. But Ellie wasn’t embarrassed anymore about those kinds of things. In fact, his assault brought a cry of pleasure up her throat, and she didn’t even try to hold it back.

While she trembled around him, Cam gave his own primal groan as he emptied himself inside her.

Really, she should’ve been listening to her shadow all along.

Cam held her high, fused together for long moments of hard breathing.

Her limbs were growing languid, drugged as she was on sex, but she still had enough strength to tug back his head by his hair to view her own handiwork. His eyes were full black, which might’ve scared some other woman, but because he was hers, she kissed him hard.

Then took a second look.

His expression was more Cam. No anger. Grief and sadness.

“Dammit,” he said, really looking at her now. “That’s not how I ever want to touch you.”

She gave him an intoxicated smile. “Not complaining.”

“Well, I can do better.”

She nipped him again, teeth to chin. “Prove it.”

 

“So I’m guessing something happened with Martin,” Ellie said.

Cam grunted and pulled her soft body closer beside him in bed. She’d unlocked him somehow, and he felt more human for it. He had to be very careful not to shut her out—for his own sake as well as hers.

“On top of the regional attacks,” he said, “Adam thinks Martin is intercepting Segue’s supplies.” Talking about the situation
did
make it easier.

“Weapons?” she asked.

“No. Food and whatnot.”

She turned around to give him her thinking face. “Interesting strategy.”

“His house’s special talent
is
warmongering.”

“We kind of ended up in the warmongering trade ourselves,” she said.

How it had come to this still baffled him.

Their mission two months ago at Martin House had been to hunt and kill Slight, the assassin who’d murdered Marcie, a Segue family member, in cold blood. They’d had to show Martin and mage houses like his that they couldn’t prey on Segue. It was talion, an eye for an eye, old world justice. Mathilde had put herself in the way. Underestimated them.

“I don’t regret it,” Ellie said. “She was evil. A mage psychopath.”

“I think it was for the best, too. Imagine someone like her coming into real power.”

Cam felt rage burn through his system as he remembered the way Mathilde had controlled Ellie’s shadow. How Mathilde had commanded that sick assassin Slight to rape her, Cam looking on and unable to fight. God, the memory made him feel dark all over again, dark and violent.

He felt Ellie shift beside him and looked down to find her frowning.

“Whatever you’re thinking, cut it out,” she said, “Or
both
my shadow and I will distract you again.”

Cam stopped breathing, shocked and . . . amused.

Was she suggesting what he thought she was suggesting? A threesome? Because, well, as shitty as the day had been, that would be epic.

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours.”

“You’re the one who suggested it.” He felt a ghost of warmth in his veins. It was good that she’d accepted her shadow so much that she’d actually share him that way. Whereas before—not so long ago, actually—she had been in constant conflict with her shadow, now she trusted . . . herself.

Not everything was unraveling then.

Ellie’s shadow suddenly sat up, splitting from her physical body into her matte-dark and naked form. She disregarded them both, including the sexy turn of their conversation, and sinuously crawled out of bed—dangerous and powerful. Ellie’s id.

Trouble here.
At last.

“What is it?” he asked the shadow. It usually responded to him.

The shadow tilted its head back, like a sleek black cat.

“Intruder,” she said.

“Y
our shirt’s on inside out,” Ellie murmured to Cam. The tag on his long-sleeved tee stuck out at the back of his neck, wavering in the cold wind as a jeep sped them across the lawns to where the action was at the main gate to Segue.

The report coming over the radio made no sense.

Seemed a Segue soldier had opened fire without provocation on John Gerry, who’d driven up the mountain to Segue. Why the Middleton resident had come, and at night, was still unknown. The man had been unarmed, and now lay dead, riddled with bullets. The soldier had no explanation for his actions.

Ellie’s shadow had knocked the soldier, named Wagner, unconscious, thereby ending the assault, but it was nowhere to be found now. With the danger past, her shadow was probably in the kitchen staring at cookies because Ellie was hungry. She’d been waiting for Cam to go down to dinner with her when he’d come up to their suite, but then they’d been sidetracked.

Cam peeled off his shirt, muscles flexing against the cold—not a nerd’s body—and turned it right side out as the jeep came to a halt at the gate.

Adam Thorne was already there, as were several soldiers. Adam was in suit pants, his button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves. He was puffing white breaths while looking at a remote touchscreen pad, probably reviewing security footage.

“Ellie”—Adam had spotted them getting out of the jeep—“can you call your shadow back and ask what happened?”

“Well, I can call it, but—” she began. Her shadow lived in the moment and had no sense of past or future. Just what was happening now.

“Do it,” Adam commanded. “Cam, what do you see?”

He meant,
What Shadow do you see?

Ellie tugged at her deepest self while Cam cast his gaze around. She made sure not to pull too hard. It had to obey her summons, but if her shadow was suspicious about anything or anyone, Ellie didn’t want to disrupt it. But her shadow pulled away easily and rushed back through the night. In less than a minute, it stood naked beside Cam, whose canvasing gaze ultimately fixed upon her.

“I love you,” the shadow said. The honest truth, straight from the deepest part of her.

“Love you, too,” he said. And Ellie never doubted him, either.

Of course, having her naked self on display before so many men was not her favorite thing in the world, but not as humiliating as it had been when she’d first arrived at Segue, afraid and out of control, her shadow a wild thing. And at least there was no coloring to differentiate bits of her—just all-over transparent shades of gray. The soldiers had been instructed to look away, and most of the time they did. Adam also gave her the courtesy of not staring.

“Ellie?” Adam said.

She passed the request along. “Cam?” He had the best shot of getting answers out of her shadow at the moment.

“What did you see?” Cam asked. “What happened here?”

The shadow didn’t recognize past tense. For all its power, it was also incredibly limited.

Adam swore and gave up. “Anything, Cam?”

Cam took another look around. “The Shadow on the property is not as dense with Khan away. No concentrations of power.” Magic surrounded Shadowman wherever he went. He was currently on the border, though before he’d left he wouldn’t say exactly what border that was. “I can’t see anything fae, either,” Cam told them.

Adam gestured to Sergeant Wagner, who’d been divested of his weapons and body armor and now knelt, wrists handcuffed behind his back. “He says he doesn’t know why he did it. He recognized that the man was harmless, but fired anyway. As if his will wasn’t his own.”

Ellie looked over at Cam, who’d glanced back at her, too. His eyes were dark again, heavy with menace.

They both could remember someone who could overcome human will and force people to do what they didn’t want to do. But that person was dead. Ellie had killed her.

At the moment, Ellie wanted to kill her again.

A Segue ambulance approached, headlights glaring in the indigo of early night. At the same time, Marshall Grouper slammed out of the gate’s security hut. He spared a brief glance for the naked shadow of a woman, but his expression telegraphed bad news.

“Middleton police are sending someone to the family,” Marshall said. “But from what I gather, seems like Mr. Gerry was on his way here to see if Segue had any antibiotics.”

Adam flinched on his feet as if struck.

Cam would take this badly, too. Ellie reached for his hand and gripped it.

Marshall swallowed with some difficulty. “Seems his daughter has pneumonia, and both the pharmacy in Middleton and the one in Old Town haven’t gotten shipments this week. The family was going to go to the hospital in Hedge Springs, but since it was so late, they thought they’d try here first.”

Adam opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He was clearly exhausted, and now this—the death of an innocent man, a father who’d come for help and had been shot for it.

Cam stared at the ground, probably grappling with his own demons again. She tightened her grip on him to let him know he wasn’t alone.

Ellie’s shadow was curling in with dismay, but Ellie’s mind was crystal clear.

She let her shadow go—no more naked lady distractions. “Marshall, see to it that the family gets the medication the daughter needs within the hour. Have their family doctor deliver and administer it—they’ll trust him and they won’t want to accept anything directly from Segue. Have him ascertain if they need other assistance and make sure they have that, too.”

“I’ll go down and tell the family myself,” Adam said.

“You will not,” Ellie said, bossing her boss. “Whoever goes down from Segue may never come up again. That man, Mr. Gerry, may be dead, but the intended target remains one of us.” Gunnar Martin was striking where it hurt.

She might sound cold, passionless, but somewhere her shadow was grieving. A specter of the emotion moved in Ellie’s chest and would be fully realized, but later, on her terms.

Another soldier stepped forward. Buzz cut. Bulky with muscle. “I’m Wagner’s CO. I’ll go.”

Ellie shook her head. “
No one
from Segue. It would only bring more danger to the family’s doorstep. The Middleton police will have to handle it. We can make reparations to the family after the threat has passed. For now we won’t go near them.”

Adam cursed again and moved toward one of the jeeps. “Seems like Specialist Russo has got this. Cam, you’re with me.”

Cam squeezed her hand back and then dropped it, but without looking at her, which meant, yes, he was concealing his reaction from her.
Shit.

She should be with him, but all she could do was watch as Cam got into the passenger seat. He said something low to Adam, but she couldn’t hear what. The jeep started, its lights coming up, and then she couldn’t even make out their bodies through the windshield.

“Ms. Russo?”

Ellie turned back to find the soldier who’d identified himself as the CO. “The EMTs want to know where you want them to take the body.”

How the hell was she supposed to know? She was a different kind of specialist.

“Segue Infirmary for now.”

“And Sergeant Wagner?”

Poor son of a bitch. He’d never forgive himself.

She couldn’t take any risks. “Lock him up in a wraith cell.”

 

“Mathilde Martin had been able to do something like this, right?” Adam asked.

Shadow streamed by as the jeep growled back toward Segue, color saturating Cam’s vision, magic hugging the earth like a mist that wouldn’t clear for centuries. No dawn, no sun was strong enough to burn it away.

“Cam?”

“Yes,” he finally said. He could guess what Adam was thinking. “Mathilde Martin claimed she could make slaves of human beings by controlling them, by overcoming their will. She controlled Ellie’s shadow that way. Made it do things Ellie didn’t want it to do. This murder had to originate with someone from that house with the same ability. And the fact that the soldier
killed
another human being—an innocent?—constitutes an act of war against humankind.”

And so one death begat another and another. Where would the chain end?

“We have to do this right,” Adam said. “Take it to the Council. Kaye cannot let Martin go unchecked any longer.”

When they got back to Segue, Talia was waiting, a pale, slight woman who packed a punch with her commanding voice. Seemed she’d been briefed.

“Do you want me to call my father?”

The big gun. John Gerry and his family probably deserved it.

Cam didn’t like to be around Khan when he used Shadow, even for the littlest things. He’d see the two worlds at once, superimposed on each other. And when his sight cleared he’d be insensible for some time after.

“No,” Adam said. “Segue is mine. The
human
part of Segue needs to handle it. Gunnar Martin tested us once before. He’ll just have to learn a second time what a big mistake that is.”

Violence. And yet Cam couldn’t argue against it. Not after what had happened at Martin House.

It took too long, but they finally got Kaye Brand up on the big screen. Even though the image was only a digital projection, Cam had to look askance or all he saw was faery and fire, not a sophisticated redhead with a temper. News traveled fast, but then she had her own elite connections. Her angel husband, Jack Bastian, stood behind her, jaw tight, expression stony.

“Adam, Cam,” Kaye said, “I’m sorry, but the similarity between Mathilde’s ability to control people and what happened to the soldier does not constitute proof that Martin House is striking against Segue or humankind.”

“But the ability is
distinctive
to that house.”

She sighed. “Yes, although the Council could argue that one of the fae might be able to do the same thing.”

Ridiculous
, Cam thought.

“Because of Martin, a man was killed at our gates,” Adam said. “Not to mention the number of supply trucks raided, drivers killed, and the fae breaches within towns in our area. People are afraid and dying, and you know he is at fault. Will you at least put it to the Council?”

“A human issue? It’ll never pass. A mob of
humans
overran and destroyed Dolan House. Magekind has very little patience with humanity at present. No.”

“Jack?” Adam asked.

The angel behind her shook his head.
No.

Jack Bastian had been Cam’s hope, too. Cam usually liked the angels. One of them had put Ellie’s shadow under her control. But The Order didn’t meddle in politics and revenge. Not then, and not now.

“You have to know that I will take steps,” Adam said to Brand. “The victim, John Gerry, was coming to Segue for help for his sick daughter. It’s why Segue must stay strong. People have to have somewhere to turn.”

“You do what you have to do,” Kaye said.

More bloodshed. More killing. And at Cam’s hands, if need be. And in the meantime, people would suffer because Segue was too distracted to help them.

Kaye made a small adjustment of her elbow on the arm of her chair. An offhand, dismissive wave of her fingers. “Might I suggest, however, a more mage-like approach?”

“And that would be?” Adam demanded.

She shrugged. “Instead of direct hostility, consider, for a change—”

“What?” Cam said, just as impatient. He hated how her kind played games.

She smiled. “Guile.”

 

“You mean lure Gunnar out of his wards?” Ellie asked.

The mage houses were protected by impenetrable magicks. No way in or out without Gunnar’s permission. Even her shadow couldn’t pass.

Everyone sat around the long table in the kitchen, not a foot from the spot where Marcie had bled to death after the mage Slight had stabbed her.

The word
guile
echoed in the air. It meant misdirection, sleight of hand, cunning.

Adam, Talia, Cam, and Ellie drank the coffee Angie Parson, mom to Carter and JT, prepared and poured. Always the best, even if in short supply.

“Yes. Use you as bait,” Adam said.

“Hell, no.” Cam was frightening to look at, but the tone in his voice was downright threatening.

“If that would solve everything, I’d do it,” Ellie said, ignoring her fiancé, “but don’t you think it’s kind of obvious?”

Gunnar had a Seminary of War on his property. There was probably an entire class devoted to lures and traps.

“You struck the poker through Mathilde’s heart,” Adam said. “Gunnar Martin will want to kill you personally.”

“You weren’t there,” Cam shook his head. “They treated us like we were dirt under their feet. Gunnar had been expecting you and Talia to visit. They permitted our presence as an amusement, an insult they were indulging. We weren’t their equals, not even when we killed Slight and Mathilde.”

Ellie nodded in agreement with Cam.

They’d tried to explain this to Adam before, but he still didn’t get it. If the situation—the lost lives, the mounting danger to everyone else—could be resolved by simply letting Gunner Martin kill them, they’d have turned themselves in a long time ago. Done. There were
children
at Segue. Neither she nor Cam would risk them for the world.

But for Gunnar Martin, killing
them
wouldn’t be enough. He would want revenge equal to the loss of his daughter, his legacy. Mathilde had been a full-blooded mage, born after Shadow had started seeping back into the world. That was Shadow with a capital S, synonymous with magic. Not shadow, the dark id-based part of Ellie that could separate from her corporeal body.

The twin boys were
Segue’s
legacy. They had royal fae blood in their veins, and their deaths would hurt like the loss of a daughter and heir. In Gunnar’s eyes, she and Cam were so far beneath him that they barely signified.