Shadowborn (20 page)

Perfect
. My heart fluttered with anticipation of success. “So you can get me into Cargun?”

An underline appeared under the word.

“And you’ll somehow keep Liam from entering without hurting him?” I’d be doing that well enough on my own.

Another underline under ‘yes’. A deep groan echoed through the empty room as a staircase formed in the floor. I’d be going underground again. I tried and failed to stifle a shiver that traveled the length of my spine with its cold, nasty fingers.

The door burst open a moment later, and Liam tumbled inside as if he’d taken a run at it and hadn’t realized the shifter had opened it of his own accord. Liam pointed a finger and sneered at the wall. “How dare you take the Seelie queen prisoner? I should burn you to the ground!”

The bone beams creaked overhead, and a whine rose in volume until it hurt my ears.

“Stop it!” I grabbed Liam’s wrist and tugged until he met my glare. “He just wanted to talk to me, and he’s afraid of you, you dick. Parthalan destroyed one of them last year for trying to help me. Tell the shifter you didn’t mean it, that you won’t hurt him.”

Liam clenched his fists and closed his eyes, pausing as if he counted to ten in his head before opening them again. “Fine. I’m sorry, I overreacted. Forgive me.” It all came out choppy and not nearly sincere enough for me.

“He can get us into Cargun.” I motioned toward the stairs with a nod of my head. “I bet you’re a little more grateful now.” I released him and leapt down the stairs two at a time.

I had to keep my emotions in check long enough to keep Liam thinking everything was peachy, leaving me free to get my meet-and-greet with Parthalan done.

At the bottom of the steps, a large, windowless room opened around me.

Liam tromped down after me, muttering something to himself. Maybe if I kept him angry, he wouldn’t venture any more questions.

He stopped beside me, his arms folded tight across his bare chest. A scowl I hadn’t seen in months rearranged his features into something menacing. “How is it going to get us into Cargun?” Liam gestured around the room with one hand before tucking it back into its former position. “I told you, even the Place Between can’t breech the ward.”

A tunnel opened in the wall in front of me as if in answer to Liam’s question.

“He’s a ‘him’, not an ‘it’.” I swept my arm toward our new path. “These creatures are far older than the fae, and probably even the elves. Who knows what magic they’re capable of?”

My footfalls whispered across the soft material that made up the floor as I entered the dim corridor, barely allowing any sound to announce my movements. I glanced over my shoulder to confirm Mr. Grouchy followed me.

I considered whether or not it would have been better if Liam stomped off in a snit. Unfortunately, he was about as stubborn as me; and I liked to think he wouldn’t let me walk into danger alone, no matter how much of a raging bull he’d become. He’d be royally pissed when I’d soon do just that. Before we reached the end of that tunnel, I had to figure out a way to get away from him. I could have forced my Will on him, but I thought that would be even more unforgivable.

We walked in silence for what I estimated to be nearly a mile, the hallway opening up into another shifter every fifty yards or so. Each new one greeted me with a groan and shiver of pleasure as I kept my energy flowing out to them.

“We have to be in Cargun by now,” Liam said, his voice low and guarded. His fingers scrubbed along the fine hairs connecting his belly button with the wonders that hung lower.

I tore my eyes away from him so I could think. I didn’t know the Black City well, but I nodded my agreement. As realization set in that my journey had almost ended, and I’d have to give up my escort and the comfort that came along with him, my lungs went into spasm.

“Lila?” Liam touched my shoulder, drawing a half whimper, half moan from my lips. “You’re shaking. I’m not going to let him hurt you.” A growl escaped him. “Never again.”

I whirled, threw my arms around Liam’s neck and held him tight. A sound from behind me drew my attention. I assumed the wall had opened for me, and I needed to divert Liam’s focus elsewhere, so I kissed him hard and deep until I heard only his moans. Our gazes locked onto one another. Confusion swirled in his along with the beginnings of fear.

Before his instincts could let him react, I pressed my lips against his ear. “I love you. Forgive me.”

I shoved my hands against his chest, forcing a grunt from deep in his core. He hollered at me as he stumbled backward while I stepped into darkness through the gap the shifter had made for me.

“Lila!” Liam screamed and launched at the opening, but it sealed up, knitted together like a fast healing wound.

His frantic yelling faded, and I imagined the shifter forcing Liam back down the tunnel the way we had come, sealing itself so he had no choice but to go or be swallowed and consumed.

Alone, in almost complete darkness, a tiny sob escaped past my attempts to contain it. Fear had dug its claws into me. I had to climb above it. If I didn’t, I’d be useless—or dead. I pressed my hands against the squishy wall until I calmed.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Liam, even though he couldn’t hear me.

My breathing slowed as I straightened and wiped the lingering wetness from my cheeks. In Cargun, I’d have to be vigilant and observant if I wanted to make it out alive. I might have had Goddess-given control of Bain and his Sluagh, but if they caught me unaware, they’d bury me in their cemetery and raise me as one of their own.

I didn’t want to spend eternity with a beak designed to rip flesh and a thirst for blood.

There weren’t many scenarios that scared me down to the soul, but that took number one on my short list. I had to find Parthalan without being seen by the others, in pitch black, in a city of thousands of glowing-eyed undead who could see in the dark.

Piece of cake.

17

I summoned enough Light to illuminate farther than a few feet in front of my squinted eyes. The room, much smaller than any other shifter I’d been in, was round instead of square, and the hollow quality of sound made me think it went up a long way. The spiral stairway suggested I’d stepped into the ground floor of a tower.

Hoping to find a high window to get my bearings, I padded up the stone steps and tried not to think about what might be going through Liam’s head at that moment.

It had to be done. Stop thinking about it!

I shook off the spasm in my chest and ascended farther, around and around until I thought I must have been in the clouds. Although I didn’t get winded easily, the stress of the day and the steep climb made me suck in air by the time I decided to stop on a small landing. A glance up revealed the steps continued beyond where my Light reached.

No windows inhabited the unadorned space—only red walls like in the natural guts of the shifters before they changed themselves to accommodate the fae that inhabited them. Hands pressed against the wall, I paused to catch my breath and calm my fraying nerves. “I need to see outside,” I said between panted breaths, extinguishing my Light. “Please.”

A squishing, sucking sound reverberated around the chamber—a noise so loud my heart lurched. After a few agonizing seconds, a gap opened in the wall and allowed a small square of silver light to blaze across the floor. The window widened slowly until it became a space wide enough for me to crawl through—if I’d been so inclined to hurl myself from the building.

“Thank you.”

I knelt before the glassless window and peered over Cargun. Dark, scaly shifters reached into the sky everywhere above a shroud of mist. All tall, thin and circular like the one I stood in. Glowing indigo-blue and silver vines crawled up their bodies, dangling down in places that gave the appearance of psychedelic hair. Dampness invaded my nostrils along with a scent of decay, the earthy scent I associated with kicking over a pile of decomposing leaves on a wet forest floor.

Flapping erupted from far below, obscured by the fog hovering close to the ground. Not one but hundreds, if I judged the booming of wings against air correctly. They screeched and spoke in their hissing language. Trembling set into my limbs. I clenched my fists and chided myself to be still.

Pain crawled over my stomach. I rubbed at it, my eyebrows dipping down in confusion.
Hungry. So hungry. Need blood. Need meat. Fly!

I shot to my feet, prepared to take flight with them, but stumbled back into the wall when my featherless arms failed to lift me. None of the thoughts was mine.
Damn
. The Sluagh were going to hunt and, because of my connection with them, I’d somehow tapped into their singular mind. All of their thoughts, desires and needs came along with it.

Nearly hyperventilating, I held the wall as I thought it through. I sensed them, but could they detect me? How would I find Parthalan in that mass of feathers and hunger without all of them setting those glowing eyes on me?

The answer smacked me in the forehead, accompanied by my palm. We were bonded. I needed to shield myself against the Sluagh, and reach out through our private metaphysical corridor to summon only him to me, though I’d have rather stabbed out my eyes with a fork.

Tired of the dark, I had the shifter close up the window and brought back my Light. My fingers gripped handfuls of my hair as I paced. If I used the bond, I’d have to release our connection from the vault I kept it in. Would I lose control? Would he use it against me?

I leaned my back against the smooth wall and slid down until sitting. I’d have done anything to have my father or Liam by my side right then. Not that I’d admit it out loud.

My head shook back and forth at my own weakness. The elves said I had to face Parthalan, and, dammit, I would. Hugging my knees, I concentrated on relaxing my body one piece at a time. First my feet. The muscles along my calves. Up my legs, my stomach, across my back and shoulders. Tension leaked out and left me soft and at rest.

The length of my inhalations and exhalations increased until anyone listening to me would have though I slept. Sight turned inward, I searched for my link with Parthalan, dug it up from my depths like a sea serpent from its hibernation chamber.

Darkness swelled inside my head until it blotted out all sight, all sound, all thought but what lay within the power. Blind, I walked forward in my mind toward the center of the place where the Unseelie spirits had attached me to Parthalan. Heat filled my body from a rage that demanded to be satisfied with someone else’s pain, but I held it at bay with a death grip. Lust throbbed in my abdomen. Drunken giggles burst from my mouth as I opened myself to his power and let it fill me.

“Come to me.”
My voice didn’t sound like my own but darker, melodious, seductive.

“Who are you?”
His words whispered through my thoughts with an airy hiss from a beak that wasn’t meant to form the words of the English language.

Other sensations drifted to me. Confusion, curiosity and fear of a kind that could turn a person’s hair white. My own waited in my depths, drowned by the lure of Unseelie energy.

Palms pressed against the floor to keep myself grounded, I sent my Will across the distance to the devil who already came nearer, his presence pushed against my mind like it always did, though not as strong. “
Come to me, and don’t let them see you leave. Concentrate only on me, and keep your mind your own.”

“Can’t. Hungry. Frightened.”

I didn’t think he meant to say the last—at least not for me to hear. The Parthalan I remembered would never have let me pick such weakness out of his head, let alone shout it through our metaphysical link.

“You can, and you will
,” I said with as much command as I had in me.

Despite his growing fear that cast a frigid shadow over my thoughts, and after a few minutes, the sound of flapping wings and the scratching of claws on stone came from above. A few flights of stairs separated me from my nightmare. My pulse stumbled before launching into a sprint.

Footsteps descended. The sound of too long nails tapped a tentative tune against the hard surface. Every few steps, he paused, sniffing and hissing at whatever he found in the air. I remained with my back fixed to the wall where I sat—my stiffened body unwilling to move me from the spot.

“You’re real. I thought my Lord had conjured you to torment me.” The trembling, whispered voice sounded like Parthalan’s, yet gentler, with no hint of his typical amusement, only the tightness of terror. “You’ve haunted me since I awoke in the earth.”

Lies!

His perfect pronunciation made me wonder if he’d transformed into his man-like form the way I’d seen Bain do once. Curiosity drove me to tilt my head up and strain to see through the dark tunnel. I found nothing but what my own imagination conjured—a myriad of shadows that might have contained anything.

I swallowed the wobble from my throat and tightened my control on Parthalan’s power to clear my head. “Undead life not all it’s cracked up to be, Parthalan?” For the first time, uttering his name didn’t choke me.

The clicking against the steps ceased again, followed by the ruffle of feathers. “Parth … a … lan? Why do you call me this?”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. You know damned well that’s your name.” My arms folded over my churning stomach. I tried to block out his confusion and the truth I found in his raw, primal thoughts, but it came through anyway. He really didn’t know who he was.

A form emerged from the darkness. Large, black wings wrapped around to obscure a pale body. Black, wispy feathers replaced his luscious curls, and glowing, arctic eyes peered at me above the curve of his wing.

My shock puffed out on a trembling breath. The sight of him, looking so lost, his eyes shining with fear, his hands balled up by his throat like a child, made me want to comfort him. That was new.

“Are you telling me you really don’t remember me?”

“I …” He touched his fingers to his temple. “I remember you here, inside. Like a voice from another time. Do you know how I came to be here in the darkness?” A few more clicks on the stone brought him nearer. “Your hatred burns me. Why do you loathe me so?” His tone held heart-stabbing sadness, degrading to a wail. “Has my Lord sent you to destroy me?”