Where Light Meets Shadow (20 page)

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Also, keep reading beyond my bio page for a teaser of my
award-winning urban fantasy, RAVENSBLOOD.

About the Author

Shawna Reppert, an award-winning
author of fantasy and steampunk, is proud of keeping readers up all night and
making them miss work deadlines. She believes that fiction should ask questions
for which there are no easy answers, while at the same time taking the reader
on a fine adventure that grips them heart and soul and keeps them turning pages
until the very end

Her debut novel, The Stolen Luck,
won a silver medal for original-world fantasy in the Global
Ebook
Awards and an
Eppie
for fantasy romance. The first
book of her Ravensblood urban fantasy series won a gold medal for contemporary
fantasy.

Her current four-footed children
are a
Lipizzan
stallion and a black-and-orange cat
named Samhain who occasionally takes over her blog. Shawna can sometimes be
found in medieval garb on a caparisoned horse, throwing javelins into innocent
hay bales that never did anything to her.

Shawna lives in the beautiful wine
country of Oregon.

Visit
Shawna at

www.Shawna-Reppert.com

Also Available

by

Shawna Reppert

First book in a compelling urban fantasy set in
the Pacific Northwest

In a life of impossible choices
when death magic is sometimes the lesser of the evils, can a dark mage save the
world and his own soul? Corwyn Ravenscroft. Raven. The last heir of an ancient
family of dark mages, he holds the secret to recreating the Ravensblood, a
legendary magical artifact of immense power.

Cassandra Greensdowne is a
Guardian. Magical law enforcement for the elected council— and Raven’s former
apprentice and lover. She is trying to live down her past. And then her past
comes to the door, asking for her help.

As a youth, Raven wanted to be a
Guardian but was rejected because of his ancestry. In his pride and his anger,
he had turned to William, the darkest and most powerful mage of their time.
William wants a return to the old ways, where the most powerful mage was ruler
absolute. But William would not be a True King from the fairy tales. He would reign
in blood and terror and darkest magic.

 Raven discovers that he does
have a conscience. It’s rather inconvenient.

He becomes a spy for the council
that William wants to overthrow, with Cassandra as his contact. Cass and Raven
have a plan to trap William outside his warded sanctuary. But William is one
step ahead of the game, with Raven’s life, his soul, and the Ravensblood all in
danger.

I

 Cass
raised her glass defiantly to her absent mentor, the man who had taught her the
difference between single-malt and blended whiskey, who had taught her to
appreciate fine port, the same man who had taught her more dark magic than any
Guardian should ever know.

 The air
was heavy with the warmth of too many people and the clashing scents of
perfumes and colognes. She settled further back into the faux red leather of
the booth, angling for a better view of the door.

 Crossroads’
self-conscious trendiness tried to appeal to all three Communities— Art, Craft
and Mundane. The décor was almost enough to distract her from the task at hand.
The black-and-white harlequin diamond pattern on the wall border repeated on
the dance floor to her right where college students and art-school drop-outs
milled, waiting for the band to finish its break. The gilded sunburst mirror
stood out dramatically against the deep red walls. Garish, but fun.

 She sipped
again at her neat scotch and welcomed the burn on her tongue. Raven had also
taught her the little charm she’d used to limit her absorption of the alcohol.
As a young apprentice fresh out of General Academy, she had been a lightweight
in every sense of the word. The charm had helped her adapt to his elegant and
alcohol-soaked world of cocktail parties, balls, and late dinners after
evenings at the symphony. She used it now so that she could drink enough not to
arouse attention and stay sober on the job.

 With her
history, she had to be twice as sharp and work twice as hard just to be given
half a chance.   Her eyes slipped over the crowd, taking in the scene.
Picking up guys at bars wasn’t her thing, and there was more at stake than a
night’s hook-up. Then again, she
was
here to pick up a guy. Just not in
the normal sense of the phrase. Most of the crowd wore the short, economical
jackets and jeans, durable, practical, inelegant denim, cotton and leather
favored by Mundanes and by much of her generation in both Art and Craft. Here
and there she spotted the sweep of more
drapy
,
old-fashioned clothing and bits of velvet and lace.

 Her own
garb this night was a compromise chosen to blend in, a silky hip-length tunic
bought in a store on the Art side of town, but
batiked
in purple-and-blue in a fashion that would have pleased a younger member of the
Craft or even a more bohemian Mundane. Her snug denim jeans were pure Mundane,
though, as were her kicky purple boots, low-heeled and comfortable for dancing.

 The
rain-streaked glass door swung open. She came alert. Four or five young people
bounced through, jostling one another like a pack of tumbling puppies. More
college students, by the Reed sweatshirt the short one wore.  Not so much
younger than her in years, maybe, but with an innocence she would never have
again. Mundanes. She could tell even from this distance. No tell-tale thrum to
resonate against her own power.
Clearly not their target.  Cass
relaxed.

Probably the one
in the school sweatshirt was a freshman, as an
upperclass
Reedie
wouldn’t be rah-rah enough to wear a school
shirt, but underage drinking was none of her concern.

The solitary
young man who arrived moments later was not a Mundane. She focused, reading his
energy, the feel of him. A warmer, softer feel, like
sunwarmed
earth. Not a mage. Wiccan or shamanic maybe, she couldn’t tell, but clearly
Craft and not Art.

A strong male
hand, tanned and slightly freckled, fell on her shoulder. Cass startled.

“Buy you a
drink, luv?”

Cass relaxed at
the unmistakably Aussie accent and turned to smile up at Zack, her fellow
Guardian and assigned partner.

Zack slid into
the seat across from hers and leaned across the table as though flirting. “Bet
you a bottle of
Glenfiddich
that the tip is a dud and
we’re wasting our time here.”

His voice was
low enough not to be heard beyond their table.

Cass shook her
head. “Why take a bet I’m sure to lose?”

Zack reached over
and took her hands, playing the part of a barfly trying to get lucky. His
normally sandy hair glowed with an odd red-and-blue miasma from the Mundane
colored lights. The slowly changing patterns of lights were supposed to create
a mood, though what mood she couldn’t say. She would have preferred the honest
soft-white glow of charmed light globes.

Zack was the
kind of handsome that the advertising agencies used to sell SUV’s and camping
equipment. His accent was charming but she kept the admiration strictly to
herself, along with any appreciation of the way his sandy-blond bangs swept his
forehead or the way his hazel-green eyes squinted just a little when he
laughed.

Guardian brass
frowned on romantic relationships between partners, although they didn’t
strictly forbid them the way
Mundane
law enforcement
did. No sense risking her working relationship with the only partner she’d kept
for more than a week in the three years she’d been a Guardian.

Zack knew her
past, of course. But he hadn’t been in the country when the scandal had been
all over the media. Maybe that was why he could accept her for what she was
now.

“So, tell me why
you
think we’re pissing in the wind.” Zack’s voice was a sultry whisper.

“Probably the
same reasons you do. Crossroads hardly seems the sort of place that William’s
followers would frequent, for one. And we don’t exactly have a history of
getting good information on anything William’s up to, not until the blood is
spilt and the bodies are cold.”

Since the end of
the Mage Wars, the Three Communities had lived with the same uneasy detente.
William, with much of his power locked into a symbiotic link with his own
wards, dared not leave them. But lately, William’s followers had been more
active. Random, gruesome violence was meant to keep the Three Communities on
edge, meant to destabilize the elected government that he abhorred.

Fear crept
through the Northwest with the rumor that William had a plan to overturn the
Joint Council in favor of a return to the old ways when the most powerful mage
was ruler absolute, and the rest of the world watched with trepidation.  

“The captain
wouldn’t have assigned us to the mission if he thought there was any hope of
success,” Zack said.

Diplomatic of
him, that ‘us’. The captain didn’t have a problem with Zack.

Still there was
a chance, always a chance they’d show here, and they couldn’t afford to ignore
it. Their snitch hadn’t even told them which of William’s followers they were
looking for.
Please, let it not be Raven.

The perky
red-headed waitress came by, put a hand on Zack’s shoulder, and cooed an offer
to get him a drink. Zack asked for a
Kaliber
. The
waitress rolled her eyes a bit at the non-alcoholic beer.

“Love Guinness,
you see.” He gave her a winning smile. “But I pulled a muscle playing rugby,
and with the pain
meds. . .”

Cass thought for
a horrible moment the waitress was going to offer to kiss it and make it
better, but she settled for a murmur of sympathy before leaving to get his
pint.

A skirl of bagpipes
and the answering whine of electric guitar drew her attention to the stage.
Magical Blend, a loud, spirited
celtic
-folk/punk/pop
fusion band held court on stage. They were like nothing she’d ever heard
before. She kind of liked them. The dance styles of Magical Blend’s fans were
as varied as the band’s musical influences. There were a few scattered
step-dancers, some quite talented, and about a dozen or so twenty-somethings
flailing about in joyous and unstructured abandon. A good half-dozen danced a creative
mix of the two styles.

Her first
boyfriend, a Mundane she’d dated while she was in General Academy, had taught
her how to get down to classic rock. Raven had taught her how to waltz, to
foxtrot, even to tango (and she couldn’t quite suppress a small thrill at
that
memory). He’d taught her every ballroom dance she might need for any formal
occasion. None of which would help her dance to what currently blasted from the
Crossroads’ sound system.  She’d give it a try, anyway. Someday. Maybe
even tonight, if the band was still playing after their lieutenant had given up
and called off the operation.

At the bar,
Lieutenant Gray was trying to get the attention of the bartender, a slender
blonde who looked barely legal. She seemed more interested in the scruffy,
bohemian young man on the stool to his left.  The lieutenant had his share
of success with the ladies, Mundane or no, but Cass was betting on the bohemian
tonight.

Gray really
didn’t have his full attention on the blonde, anyway. From where he stood at
the corner of the bar, he had a perfect view of the door, and he was watching
each new arrival.

The waitress
arrived with Zack’s pint and earnestly asked if she could get him anything else
before sashaying on her way. Zack took a sip of his pint, and grimaced.

“I’d rather be
drinking
Bushmill’s
.” He took another cautious sip.
“But I’ve never been able to stomach olive oil.”

Olive oil did
keep you from getting drunk, but it had certain unpleasant side effects even if
you could keep it down. Cass hid a smile. She couldn’t share the sobriety charm
without facing questions about its origin. But Zack had never thrown her past
in her face. Perhaps she could someday teach the charm to him in private.

Two tables away,
another of her colleagues sat with her own partner. Jackie looked a bit green
under her expertly applied foundation. Using the olive oil technique, no doubt.

Jackie noticed
her gaze, and gave her the plastic smile of a runway model. Her lips were
painted the red of a fresh-fed vampire’s in a
Mundane’s
late-night horror flick. Jackie had been one of her first partners when Cass
had joined the Guardians. The partnership had lasted less than a week.

Jackie leaned in
to whisper something to her current partner. Cass caught the words “Raven’s
whore.”

Cass did not
feel the least bit guilty about not sharing Raven’s charm with her.

“You all right,
luv?” Zack asked.

Cass shook her
head to clear the dark thoughts, and smiled. “Fine.”

Once the mere
thought of Raven would have been a knife twisting in her gut. Now it felt more
like an old wound, poorly healed and still tender.

Zack nodded and
leaned back in the chair to watch the band, but she caught him studying her out
of the corner of his eye.

Over at the bar,
the lieutenant was still trying his luck with the blonde bartender. Suddenly,
he stiffened like a sight hound spotting a deer. She followed his gaze to two
new arrivals standing by the door and caught her breath. Two mages, dressed
almost identically, with long gray frock coats trimmed in velvet, gray slacks,
white shirts with lace at the throat.

She recognized
the older of the two men. Eric Blanchard, William’s cousin, wore his chestnut
hair in long, loose curls down to his shoulders. He had a soft, full, sensual
mouth, a poet’s mouth, but the hard, black ice of his eyes gave lie to that
romantic promise.

Cass shifted in
her seat, using Zack’s broad shoulders to block Eric’s line-of-sight. It had
been three years at least, and probably more, since she had danced with the man
in the ballroom of Raven’s manor. And it had been nearly that long since her
face had graced the front pages of tabloids. He might not recognize her. She
might not have known him, if she hadn’t seen his face on a recent wanted
bulletin.

“Is that who I
think it is?” Zack asked in an undertone.

“Yes,” Cass
whispered. “And there’s a chance he could recognize me.”

“Bloody Eric?”

“I danced with
him once,” she confessed.

Zack just raised
an eyebrow. “That’s a story I’ve got to hear someday.”

If Eric did recognize
her, he would be on alert. And if things went poorly they would have a bigger
problem than just the missed opportunity to apprehend a dark mage.

Cass remembered
that one dance she’d had with the man. She hadn’t known then what he truly was,
any more than she had known Raven’s true agenda, and still something about him
made her want to shudder at his touch.  After she read his file, she felt
the urge to scrub herself raw in a hot shower any time she thought of that
waltz.

William was fond
of mayhem and carnage. Raven would not shy from the same if it served his
purposes. But for Eric, bloody violence was a religion and he was a most
ecstatic celebrant.

If they tried to
capture him here, in a public place, they risked a blood bath. If they did
nothing, they missed a chance they might not get again. And everybody would
know that Bloody Eric could walk boldly through the streets of Portland and the
Guardians could do nothing to stop him.

Not to mention,
whatever brought Eric to Crossroads, it was not likely a desire to take in the
music or the atmosphere.

She caught the
lieutenant’s eye. He nodded. The operation was still a go.

Eric and his
protégé sauntered further into the room. Zack slipped out of their booth and
headed toward the door. Cass followed, digging through her purse as though
looking for cigarettes. The action gave a plausible reason for their movement
toward the door, and an excuse for her to keep her head down.

They reached the
exit just as Jackie cast an anti-teleportation ward over the room to keep the
dark mages from escaping. Cass and Zack turned as one, and stood shoulder to
shoulder, blocking the door.