The Resurrection Game E-Book

Michelle Belanger

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Dark contemporary fantasy in the vein of Rob Thurman and Jim Butcher. The ritualistic murder of a woman reveals a plot to destroy Zack and take from him everything he values—including his identity.Speeding through the night, Zack Westland seeks to put his nightmares behind him, at least for the moment. Yet when he stops for gas, the chittering sounds of cacodaimons remind him that there is no escape.Calling upon his abilities as one of the Anakim—a tribe of angels trapped on Earth—Zack dispatches the hideous creatures and seeks to depart before the police can arrive. Then he sees something that chills him to the bone... A man wearing his face.When a connection emerges between Zack's doppelganger and a series of ritualistic murders, Zack must call upon his every ally to find this murderer before he can strike again. For all of them are targets, and the sadistic serial killer won't stop until all are dead.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also Available from Michelle Belanger and Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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Acknowledgments

About the Author

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM MICHELLE BELANGERAND TITAN BOOKS

Conspiracy of Angels

Harsh Gods

Mortal Sins (e-novella)

A NOVEL OF THE SHADOWSIDE

MICHELLE BELANGER

TITAN BOOKS

THE RESURRECTION GAME

Print edition ISBN: 9781783299560

Electronic edition ISBN: 9781783299577

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: November 2017

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 Michelle Belanger.

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available

from the British Library.

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For Vera Rubin

1

Miles of empty night sped away from the Kawasaki. Hugging the lines of the cruiser, I leaned forward and dared to spread my wings. The disguising cowl of energy that hid my more-than-human nature shredded as they unfurled across the road. The vast limbs of pale blue light didn’t strictly exist in the physical world, but I felt the wind blowing through them all the same. Grinning beneath my helmet, I coaxed the Vulcan faster.

It was the closest thing to flying in the mortal world.

A sign for Chagrin River Park zipped past and I traded open highway for winding, narrow curves. A thin ribbon of asphalt—more a nature trail than a proper road—cut through a forest as deep as it was dark. I swerved around the chained stanchions with the “Park closes at eleven” sign, spitting mud and turf behind my wheels, and let the Vulcan go all-out. Mist spilled from the shadows between broad, lichen-covered trunks, and skirls of early autumn leaves scattered in the headlamp at every dip in the path. The hilly trail felt like riding a rollercoaster, and, giddy with the pulse of the wind and the motor, I took every turn a little too fast.

I could almost leave the nightmares behind me. Almost.

Again and again, I urged myself close to a skid, reveling in my body’s hard twist and pull as I kept the Vulcan on the treacherous excuse for a road. Here, at least, was something I could conquer—as opposed to dream after dream where power sang a siren song and I lost all control. The world ran red in those dreams, and a part of me was hungry for it.

Pouring on the speed, I pretended I could outrun myself.

All too swiftly, the needle tipped toward E. I hadn’t bothered to check the tank before heading out and that was hours ago. Stupid, but this current bout of insomnia hadn’t been great for my skills at decision-making. Seeking a main road, I worked my way out of the damp hollows of the park. Riverwood Loop dumped me onto Rural, a street so aptly named, it wasn’t much different from the nature trail I’d been joyriding. Rural led in the opposite direction of the highway, but the houses started getting closer together, and with all the lights in the distance, there had to be a gas station somewhere up ahead.

There were four. I passed each of them as I traveled from Rural to Reeves and finally onto Lakeshore, crossing the river that lent the park its unlikely name—Chagrin. Every single one of the stations, even the one in the middle of town, was dark and abandoned, their glassed-in storefronts locked against the night. Even on E, the bike still had miles in her, so I pressed onward, sticking to Lakeshore because it led straight to the city. Once I got closer to Cleveland, there was sure to be a gas station that shared my insomniac hours.

As the ride wore on, I regretted the decision. Like Rural before it, Lakeshore was a road named for the countryside through which it led. The mostly two-lane boulevard hugged the shore of Erie and, while I couldn’t always see that stretch of dark water, there was no mistaking the brooding presence of the lake. Bleak and uncanny, it dragged at my senses, threatening to unravel all the calm I’d stitched together earlier on my ride.

The mortals couldn’t see it—lucky bastards—but Erie wasn’t any normal body of water. It was a vast abyss yawning far deeper than fathom charts could graph. In the heart of the lake’s darkness, a doorway hung open, and crimson-eyed horrors slithered into our world from whatever hell they called home. I fought the cacodaimons on a regular basis, but rarely this close to the water. The lake held too many bad memories—and more that I could never recover.

Belatedly, I pulled my wings tight against my body. Cacodaimons had a keen scent for energy, and they knew mine all too well. The subtle magic didn’t come easily, and I focused so hard that my palms cramped on the motorcycle’s grips. Painfully, the scar on my left hand twitched. One thing lay at the bottom of the lake that I’d tried to lose intentionally, but the artifact had its hooks in me deep, and this was its reminder. If my nightmares were any indication, I had no hope of tearing free.

Shoving the bleak thoughts into a corner, I shifted my shoulders and settled into a more comfortable position across the bike. The low fuel light blinked on, letting me know I’d be stranded if a station didn’t manifest soon.

The engine was sucking fumes when I finally spied the lighted sign of a twenty-four-hour gas station with the dubious name of “Qwik-Fill.” Deep in East Collinwood, the off-brand establishment sat on a sad spit of asphalt warped by time and neglect. An empty lot stretched across from it, wild with sumac and chest-high weeds. A sign for the Ohio Lotto declared the weekly numbers, but it was missing half its bulbs and those still working stuttered weakly, taunting with their promised millions.

Coasting to the nearest pump, I slid off the bike, stretching as soon as it leaned on the kickstand. Both shoulders cracked like rifle shots and I unfastened my helmet so I could properly roll some of the tightness from my neck. Vertebrae crackled all the way up. I’d been riding for hours without a single cramp, but the dark ruminations inspired by the lake had made the last twenty minutes especially tense.

Hooking the helmet over one of the grips, I uncapped the gas tank and dug for my wallet, only to see a bright strip of yellow tape over the card reader at the pump. Flapping beneath it, like a flag of surrender, was a slip of receipt paper scrawled with big block letters.

SORRY. NOT WORKING.

It was the same story on the other side. All the card readers were down.

“Fuck me running,” I muttered.

Unenthusiastically, I opened the billfold, pretty certain I had no cash. One tattered dollar peeked out from behind a folded receipt from work. That wouldn’t get me much, and my Platinum card was worthless if the station couldn’t take plastic. Already scouring various pockets, I gestured to catch the attention of the solitary attendant mopping the tiles in front of the counter. He waved me closer cheerily, wiping lean brown fingers against a stained apron after propping the mop handle alongside a chip display. I tested the door, not really expecting it to open, but he had it unlocked even at this hour.

“A weary traveler, and so late,” he called. He had a voice made for radio—expressive, rich, and resonant. “I’m sorry our card readers are down.”

“Yeah, I noticed. In here, too?”

He nodded. If he caught my gruff irritation, his face betrayed no insult. He cracked an apologetic smile, wide and pleasant and short a few teeth.

“It was the storm earlier,” he said. Nimbly, he scooted behind the counter, barely having to lift the little gate. His navy-blue polo shirt hung baggily on a frame more stick than flesh. Maybe fifty, his once-black hair was mostly gray. A curious patch of pallid scars puckered behind one ear and the hair that grew around them was white and wispy as cobwebs.

“Storm? Didn’t rain where I was.” I plunked down my ratty dollar and a handful of lint-sticky coins. It was all I could scavenge from my pockets. “If you can’t take plastic, this is what I got.”

Thick brows knitting over dark, intelligent eyes, he bent and started counting. Softly, he murmured all the numbers as if reminding himself of both their taste and sound. One seventy-five. One eighty. Two dollars. It nagged at me that I couldn’t place the accent of his words. Languages were kind of one of my super-powers. I was tired enough that my mouth followed thought without filter and I blurted the question, whether it was polite or not. “Where you from?”

With a tolerant smile, he looked up from his counting. “Aleppo. But I taught history as a young man in Britain, so I get asked that a lot.” Wasted circles stamped a silent testament under his eyes and I made the mistake of looking too deep. Before I could stop it, a harsh wave of images pummeled my over-tired brain—a street lined with dead children, their skin gray from the rubble’s endless dust. Shattered ruins of buildings, businesses, homes…

“You were there for the bombings. Your family—” It escaped as less than a whisper, but I might as well have shouted for the way he recoiled.

“How do you know that?” he demanded. More images surged with his reaction—fire and running and blood. Digging for the corpse of his daughter. I didn’t want any of it. I slammed up all of my shields, silently cursing my gifts.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“No,” he objected, reaching to seize my fingers. With a stifled snarl, I jerked them out of reach. He stared, uncomprehending. “Sir, please. Tell me. How can you know these things?”

“Sorry,” I choked again, back-pedaling hurriedly from the counter. “The money—just put it on pump one, OK?” Before he could ask anything further, I bolted for the door, scrubbing my eyes clear of visions. I didn’t even see the woman when I slammed into her, but I couldn’t miss her stink. A mix of sweat and stress and chemicals, all of it sharp and stinging in my sinuses. Meth-head, probably. I didn’t want anything that was in her brain, so I redoubled my efforts, closing my perceptions until I felt almost blind. Staggering through the swinging door, I just kept my head down and my shields up as I rushed out to the bike.

Grabbing the hose, I fed gas into the tank, willing the scroll of decimals to hurry while I shoved all my psychic shit back under its lid. Fucking nightmares had me worn ragged.

The last penny of my pre-pay rolled forward on the display and the pump shut off. I replaced the nozzle, grabbing my helmet from the handlebars. But before I put it on, something stopped me—a creeping sense of scrutiny that teased the hairs on my neck. I turned toward the stretch of grimy windows, expecting to see the haunted eyes of the refugee clerk.

The woman’s face was pressed against the glass. Empty-eyed, she gaped at me. Behind her, the history professor turned gas station attendant moved with his mop and bucket through the central aisle of the store. He bent without complaint to the lowly work, paying no attention to the woman at the windows. And why should he? She was just another peculiar customer on a long and lonely night.

Then came a chittering cry, one that I’d heard too many times before.

Cacodaimon.

The woman dragged her nails against the glass, eyes gleaming crimson as her rider revealed itself at last. Once it had my attention, her face split in a hideous grin. Ghosted over by the maw of her rider, her mouth was all teeth, and I was struck with the certainty that at any moment her entire head would swing open on a hinge to reveal some jack-in-the-box skeleton screaming from the moist chasm of her throat.

Laughing—I could tell she was laughing—she rushed from the window and tackled the clerk. It happened so fast. Teeth and nails. That was all she had, but spurred by the frenzied strength of the cacodaimon, it was enough.

Arterial blood arced across the aisles before I fully processed her attack.

Dropping everything, I ran to the door, blurring Nephilim-quick. It was a trick learned from my brother Remy, and, while it was costly, it was handy in a crunch. I crossed the store in less time than it took to unsheathe the twin daggers concealed at my wrists.

Blue-white fire crackled around my fingers as I thrust the woman from her victim. She whirled and snapped wildly, blood coating the entire lower half of her face. Through her vacant eyes, the glare of the cacodaimon burned hateful and red. The thing was fully wedded to her—had to have been from the moment she walked through the door. And I’d been so mired in my own shit that I’d missed it completely.

Too late now.

Fingers hooking for my eyes, she threw herself at me. The cacodaimon hissed as I sought to pry it from her body, inky flesh cold and stinking in the light. The woman shrieked and ferociously clawed for my eyes, my throat, my face. With the pommel of one dagger, I struck a ringing blow against her temple. A concussion of light exploded at the impact and both woman and rider tumbled ragdoll-limp across a football-themed display of Budweiser cans.

At my feet, the dying clerk spasmed. He was bleeding out, and nothing could stop it. Three refugee camps, the wreckage of a life in Aleppo—he’d survived everything just to end with a possessed woman’s teeth in his throat.

I blamed myself.

His out-flung arm twitched, and I caught skittering motion behind him on the tiles. A second cacodaimon slunk along his back like a fat, black leech, spindly legs worming into his nerves. He wasn’t even dead and already it sought to claim his body for its own. Intoning the syllables of my Name, I called power to my blades and slashed at its central mass, severing every connection. The thing shrilled as I cut it to pieces.

An answering cry erupted from the possessed woman’s throat. Conscious, but wobbly, she dragged herself from the spill of dented beer cans, lurching into a rack of chips as she scrambled for the door. Glossy packets of Doritos and Ruffles scattered every which way across the sticky tiles. I turned to sprint after her, but the clerk seized my ankle and clung with the strength of the doomed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, as if that could change a damned thing. “I won’t let it hurt anyone else.” It was the best I could offer. His thin body spasmed once, a final spray of blood-flecked spittle erupting over the leather of my boots. His eyes fixed on the ceiling, staring past me to an incomprehensible vastness.

Yanking free from the vise of his dead fingers, I rushed to make good on my promise.

2

Outside, the cacodaimon-ridden woman ran pellmell past the furthest row of pumps, already half way to the road. Flexing my will, I pulled the speed trick again, hurriedly sheathing my blades so I didn’t impale myself if I tumbled. Closing the distance in an eyeblink, I streaked past my parked motorcycle and tackled her before she could get beyond the sallow lights of the gas station canopy.

I slammed into her hard and we hit the ground in a flailing jumble. The creature riding her shrieked with hateful fury, rearing back from its host to bare rows of razorblade teeth. Striking like a cobra, it darted for my face.

That was a mistake.

Spirit-fire blazing around my hands, I seized the incorporeal horror just under its flaring black hood. Its cold flesh sizzled on contact. Both host and rider fought with manic ferocity, the cacodaimon pushing the woman’s body so hard her tendons crackled. She went for the throat, clawing and biting at the vulnerable flesh between jaw and neck. Roughly, I smashed her face with my shoulder so I could focus on the cacodaimon. Once I tore it from her nervous system, she would drop like a cast-off suit of clothes.

Contact with the soot-black flesh sent gnawing waves of numbness up to my wrists, but I didn’t let up, throttling the invertebrate nightmare until its hold on its host finally began to slip. Long coils of sectioned tail unspooled from its vessel like some hellish tapeworm, the little scythes of its claws scrabbling against the thick leather of my biker jacket. The barbed tip finally ripped from the base of her spine and the woman shrieked once, back bowing until her head nearly met her heels. Ripping bloody gouges in her face, she did an awkward pirouette, then pitched heavily onto her side.

As she writhed on the pavement, pinkish-gray sludge seeped from her nose and her ears—her brains, leaking out of her head like pink slurry. The smell was somewhere between spoiled meat and rank sushi, and everything in my stomach threatened to come up at once. No matter how many times I killed these monsters, the wreck they left of their human hosts never failed to gut me.

Noticing my distraction, the cacodaimon twisted fiercely, whipping the spiny tip of its tail straight for my head. I brought my forearm up to deflect, but half a second too late. The impact sent me reeling and the parasitic nightmare jerked free of my grip. Shrieking with triumph and mockery, it zipped like a rocket for the dark growth of weeds in the vacant lot across the street.

Bellowing with pain and frustration, I raised my own shout—three potent syllables that echoed through the night.

“Za—qui—el.”

My station. My power. My Name.

Light crackled with renewed fury around my fingertips, and I charged across the empty ribbon of street. Even so, I almost lost the creature in the deep shadows. Undeterred, I let my vision spill to the Shadowside, the realm of spirits one step off from mortal reality. There, the black-on-black nightmare sketched an unmistakable silhouette against a landscape of stark, amorphous gray. It moved stealthily now, gliding with the eerie grace of a beast born of deep water.

Stumbling over roots and weed-choked junk, I pursued with single-minded purpose. The treacherous footing gave the cacodaimon a growing lead.

Abruptly, I slammed into the mesh of a chain-link fence, and uttered a startled curse. With all my focus on the spirit-realm, I’d missed the thing completely.

Shaking the gathered power from my hands, I twined my fingers through the wire lattice and bodily dragged myself up. Near the top, my jacket snagged on a rusty bit of wire, and for a moment, I teetered, stuck. All at once, the jacket pulled free and I tumbled in a heap to the slick grass on the other side. Catching most of the impact on one shoulder, I rolled to my feet and charged onward.

The cacodaimon was yards ahead, making a swift beeline across a wide, flat park, heading for the erector-set sprawl of a public playground. Moray-swift it flew across the lawn. Glancing back, it loosed a taunting cry, the slitted crimson of its eyes gleaming in the dark.

Calling on a burst of speed again, I felt the strain blossom under my ribs with a breath-hitching burn. My sprint covered less distance than before, fizzling as my feet traded grass for damp wood chips. The cacodaimon dove into the shadowy hulk of a jungle gym, disappearing into the tubes of a tunnel maze only to charge hissing from the other end like some obscene jack-in-the-box. I lost it at the base of an enclosed spiral side, staggering in circles as I strove to pick up the trail while fighting to catch my breath.

Another shrill screech told me I was off the mark entirely—the cacodaimon had doubled back and was halfway to the road again. A lone car crawled west along Lakeshore, its driver slaloming drunkenly from lane to lane. Its lights dimmed as a shadow flew past, and, for a terrible moment I feared the cacodaimon was intent on claiming another vessel—minds weakened through drugs or alcohol were easier to subvert.

But the creature twisted sharply, angling its body toward a distant arch of brick and concrete on the far side of the road. Broad marquee letters stretched between the twin towers of the gateway.

EUCLID BEACH PARK

It was heading for the lake.

I pelted after it, but couldn’t move fast enough, and the burning stitch in my side that came with each breath was a warning. Nevertheless, I ignored it, and with the dregs of my physical reserves, I pushed.

This time, the speed didn’t come. The thundering ache in my chest cut so sharp, for a minute I couldn’t breathe. My legs went all watery and I nearly pitched forward.

While I floundered, the cacodaimon arrowed toward escape. Once it reached the silt-choked waters of Erie, I might as well quit. Cacodaimons belonged to the deep places, and those were places I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—venture.

What I needed was a Crossing so I could face the creature on the Shadowside. That was my turf, the unique purview of the Anakim tribe. The transit had a price, of course—every power did—but it didn’t grind me down as fast as the Nephilim speed. I needed the use of my wings. On that side, I didn’t have to run—I could fly.

Concentrating to make my head stop spinning, I threw my senses wide, seeking the telltale stain of human trauma. Crossings required a special alchemy—the perfect blend of drawn-out violence, fear, and desolation. The gas station attendant’s death had been brutal, but too swift. He’d been bleeding out before he even processed the attack.

Just as I was about to give up, there was a prickling presence. Turning toward the glimmer of distant apartments, I homed in on the source. If I could find the nexus and cross quickly, I could take to the air and get the drop on this monster so it couldn’t return and claim another life.

Through the thunder of my pulse, I found the edge of the psychic imprint about thirty feet to the left of the archway. There, an incandescent moment of human suffering played against the landscape like a movie loop on endless repeat, invisible to mortal senses. My focus narrowed until the shadowy echo was all I could perceive—an elderly woman’s brutal assault.

Details flooded over me in a rush, images and emotions twining indistinguishably. I seized them like a rope, and for a moment I was completely immersed. I saw the snowy cap of her hair, buzzed close to her scalp so she didn’t have to fuss. Arthritis put a wobble in her gait that had embarrassed her twenty years back. Now, not so much. She was simply happy she had legs that carried her along. Too poor to own a car, she’d given up on cabs long ago. Cabbies didn’t stop for folks so dark, not even with that much white in their hair.

The loops of heavy plastic grocery bags cut into her hands, and she fussed about the apples that fool of a clerk had dumped down at the bottom beneath the bread. She just knew she was going to lose one through a tear, and those apples were destined for a pie. A reward for a very special grandson. Straight A’s another semester.

Boy was going places.

She was so proud.

As she paused to rearrange the bags, two men—teens by the look of them—sauntered up behind her. She daydreamed about her grandson standing tall in cap and gown, and was so fixated on the sight of that future diploma that she didn’t notice the shadowy figures looming close by.

They didn’t like the look of her. Their brutish emotions blurred in jagged bursts across the vision, momentarily blotting out the image of the elderly woman. The Shadowside gobbled the sounds of their voices, but it was easy to guess the slurs.

The scene stuttered forward and the woman was locked in a desperate struggle. She didn’t take their treatment quietly, never tolerated that sort of ugliness—not when she was young, and not now—but her days of fighting were long behind her. She swung the grocery bags at her attackers, it wrecked her balance, and she went down. Enraged by her defiance, they kicked and punched and beat her, mouths twisted in silent shouts.

She shielded her head from the worst of it, but her body rocked with every blow. I imagined I could hear the crackling of broken ribs, the high and tremulous keening of her pain.

They didn’t kill her. When she didn’t beg, they grew bored. In the end, the tallest stole an apple, cheerfully eating as they left her in a heap among her smashed and scattered groceries. His smug triumph filled my mouth with bitter bile—

And then I was through. Blinking, I swayed in the grayscale landscape, briefly uncertain where the imprinted emotions ended and my own began. The chittering cry of the cacodaimon lasered my attention back to the present. The sound dopplered in the distance. If I didn’t hurry, the bastard would escape.

With a few solid strokes of my wings, I took to the sky.

3

Below me stretched the phantom of a bustling amusement park—Euclid Beach, gone for decades but so firmly imprinted in local memory that echoes of both park-goers and rides remained in the patchwork landscape of the Shadowside. Faded as photos on antique film, the coasters and crowds stuttered in and out of existence, shuffled over by other, less distinct imprints—the blocky hulks of construction equipment, barren fields, and the brittle ghosts of long-dead trees.

I spied it near the lusterless form of an endlessly spinning carousel—a shadow so black that light sank into its depths. The cacodaimon glided sinuously from one old-time ride to the next, swimming through the air as easily as water. In an instant, it became aware of my attention, doubling its speed to disappear beneath the cover of a broad, flat building perched on Lake Erie’s edge.

Beyond the specter of that building, the great maw of the lake gobbled the horizon. As I pounded the air, that growing sharpness tightened within my chest. It was more than a holdover from the failed attempt at Nephilim-speed. Every minute in this twilit realm sucked precious vitality. Though I was technically immortal, if I overstayed my welcome I still could die—at least the physical part of me. The rest would drift, unmoored, while I struggled to attach myself to a new incarnation.

It was a process I hoped to avoid. I didn’t trust it. Steeling myself, I scanned the ground and readied my weapons. Spirit-fire licked along the gleaming curves of my daggers, a perfect echo of the light streaming from my wings.

The cacodaimon finally darted from its cover and toward the sucking void of the lake. I dropped like a thunderbolt and caught up with it on a thin strip of sand perhaps ten feet from the edge of the blackness. With the yawning chasm of Erie at my back, I defiantly spread my wings. The cacodaimon reared and hissed in their glow, baring a maw bristling with teeth.

“Eeeeeat yyoouu, Sssskyborn. Ssssnuuufff yoouurrr liiightttt.” The voice of the creature flensed the air, shrilling like metal collapsed beneath its own weight.

It lunged, and I lashed out in swift response. The cacodaimon dodged—but not fast enough. Half a dozen insectile limbs fell twitching at my feet. It recovered quickly. Feinting left, then right, it strove to snake beneath the living barrier at my back. Talons raked my side as I pivoted to block its escape. The thick leather of my biker jacket deflected most of the blow, but one stinging line of cold blossomed along the exposed flesh of my throat. Cloying numbness trailed in the cacodaimon’s wake.

Shaking off the damage, I buffeted the creature with the joint of one great wing. Wherever it made contact, the light sizzled the nightmare’s rubbery flesh. My breath hitched at the stink.

Though I was running on fumes, the lust of battle kept me moving. My curving daggers flashed once, then twice, tearing through the cacodaimon’s central mass. Still dazed by the blow from my wing, the creature thrashed feebly, scything its tail toward my knees. The strike never connected. After a third pass from my daggers, the chittering horror disintegrated into chunks of black jelly—sticky as Napalm but with an arctic burn. They spread freezing numbness wherever they touched skin, then, like snow on hot pavement, melted clean away.

In the wake of the fight, I sucked air in heaving gulps. The stench of burned cacodaimon seared the back of my throat. I spat its foulness onto the ground, but it was the kind of taste that lingered. Tomorrow I’d wake up with it pasted to my tongue.

Wiping the gunk from my blades, I crossed back into the flesh-and-blood world. Dropping to my knees in the dirty sand, I struggled to get both daggers back into the Kydex sheaths that ran the lengths of my forearms. My hands shook with post-adrenaline tremors as I tugged the cuffs of my jacket down to conceal the rounded pommels. A fishy gust from the lake chilled streamers of sweat trickling down my face.

My whole neck felt wet. Tacky.

That wasn’t sweat.

Blindly, I sought the edges of the wound, trying to get a sense of its length and depth. Scalpel-clean, it didn’t hurt or sting, at least not yet. That probably wasn’t good, but, so far, nothing spurted. A nick to jugular or carotid would have meant near-instant death.

While I shoved my fingers into the slice at my throat, someone uttered a harsh whisper.

Behind you.

It came so fast I couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to a woman or a man. I wasn’t even certain it was human. Awkwardly, I whirled to catch sight of the speaker. There was nothing—and no one—behind me. It wasn’t uncommon for me to hear spirits, but Lailah was the only one I might expect to issue phantom warnings. Yet I’d know her voice, even in whispers.

This wasn’t the Lady of Shades.

Overhead, the blind eye of the moon peeked through a scudding veil of clouds, making its first appearance in hours. As I scanned the silvered landscape, a rush of motion rustled the hair at my nape. It carried with it the strangest scent, like the wind scouring distant tundra. Frigid and desolate, it stirred emotions deep in the hinterlands of my brain—something familiar that I couldn’t place. I lurched to my feet in an instant, yanking out both gleaming blades. Brandishing the weapons, I pivoted to meet an attacker.

Again, there was no one.

Either I’d lost more blood than I’d realized and was hallucinating, or someone was fucking with me. The soaring moon winked in and out, its light strobing the empty beach, making monsters of piles of driftwood. On high alert, I turned in every direction. From east to west, no living being stirred, only deep shadows. Even the sand showed only the footprints I’d made, beginning where I’d exited the Shadowside.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the sense I was being watched. So I wove a cowl to cloak the more-than-human parts of me, adding extra layers to distract and obscure my presence. Tentatively re-sheathing only one of the weapons, I lingered uncertainly on the gray stretch of beach, struggling to place that cold, desolate scent. Nothing came. Heart still surging, I shifted my vision to peer into the Shadowside.

No spirits. Nothing. Just the sucking chasm masquerading as a lake.

Baffled, I started limping back toward the road. The more distance I could put between me and those haunted waters, the better.

4

As I scrabbled up the steep embankment, a call came through on my cell.

At first, I just jumped at the manic buzz against my backside. The traitor moon had fled and, in the gloom, lights from the distant apartments were barely visible through a stand of second-growth trees. The phone buzzed again and I dug for it in my pocket, if only to shut the thing up.

A fine tracery of wards prickled my fingers when I brushed the slim case. I was proud of that work—the wards were probably the only reason the device had any charge. Ordinarily, Shadowside travel sucked the life from electronics, especially the delicate inner workings of smartphones. Over the summer, I’d done enough theorycrafting to sort out a fix. So far, the protective mesh of magic had held.