The threat became useless an instant later as the sound of saw-stars whined through the air. They entered the chest of his captive in three solid thunks, even without him having to move to guard. It was clear the ruthless killer in the shadows had murdered his own partner rather than have him taken alive or be given opportunity to reveal his location. These stars, unlike the others, were black as night, however, warning Trace that what he was facing now was something vastly different than a scheming senator. Since trained assassins could learn how to throw stars in a curve, and the whine of the flung missile was designed to echo and throw off its locus, he had no idea where they had come from.
All he knew with certainty was that the assassin was skulking in Ashla’s side of the building. He had no doubt that had the hired gun been behind him, he wouldn’t have wasted the chance to kill him.
This thought was reaffirmed when the buzzing of blades on air whipped past, one clipping his cheek and another the exposed side of his rib cage on the right. The blade sliced almost painlessly through both his shirts and his flesh before it flew in a true line to hit the drywall several feet behind him. The strike sent fire blossoming over his ribs, but he ignored it as he unburdened himself of the body and dove for the deepest shadows nearby. He skipped locations quickly, altering sides of the room even as he still felt the breeze of a star passing so close he knew it would have hit true under any other circumstances. He measured his breath and waited for the assassin to move again and give himself away. He was thankful for the blood-dulled metal of his blade as he readied it for defense or offense. Whichever came first.
“Trace.”
It was the faintest whisper, but his keen hearing picked it up easily. Ashla. She didn’t realize she could be easily heard by one of his breed.
Because you never told her about your breed, he thought in fierce regret.
It was for this reason that Magnus had always lectured him about keeping focus in a fight. He became aware of a presence to his left barely in time to avoid another dagger in his back. He would be damned if he knew how he had given himself away, but the cunning assassin had seen him, as still as he was. He sidestepped, lunging down low to the ground and shooting out a leg to catch the enemy at his ankles. The assassin dodged the trip, lightly overstepping Trace’s leg and flipping his blackened dagger around to expose the heavy counterbalance in its hilt even as Trace reached for the tanto blade he kept concealed in his boot. The eight-inch Japanese dagger allowed him to fight closer than the katana did, which was fortunate since his attacker clipped Trace hard upside the head with his steel just as he drew the short blade and cut it with a right-handed sweep under his opponent’s arm, returning the draw of blood across his ribs with one of his own.
The assassin recoiled with a grunt, stumbling back over Trace’s still-outstretched leg. The reaction surprised Trace. The hired gun acted as though he had never taken a wound before, and it was highly unlikely that he had never been injured in training. Just the same, he was in full, fast retreat and in the shadows before Trace could catch him. He knew the instant his reach came up empty that the bastard had Unfaded.
As disappointed as he was at the lost opportunity, he needed to take advantage quickly. He resheathed the tanto quickly and ran for the counter at the front of the room. He cleared it in a single lithe vault, his boots hitting the tile on the other side lightly in spite of his weight and speed. Habit. Unfortunately, it made for a very surprised blonde when he suddenly came around to her. She let out a squeal of alarm until she recognized him. Then she just pressed back hard against the wall and looked at him exactly how he would have expected a human to look at him after seeing him disappear before their eyes.
“I’ll explain on the way,” he sighed. “Right now, we need to get out of here.”
What choice did she have? Ashla took his offered hand and let him boost her over the counter. He followed after grabbing up his belt and her jacket. Then he hurried them out the rear exit. Since his enemies had likely entered this way, if there were further enforcements they would be focused on the front of the building, where the couple would have been forced to run had they tried an escape. Trace’s sharp eyes picked up two sets of tracks in the otherwise undisturbed snow. He wasn’t in a position to round the front and take on any other possible comers, so he hurried Ashla out into the deeper snow in the lot behind the building.
She ran with him, jerking on her coat quickly, her breath clouding fast on the air. She was afraid to stay behind, and afraid to go with him. She had no idea what was going on and felt like she was in some kind of surreal nightmare. After all, how else could you go from sex to samurai swords in sixty seconds, if not in a weird, disjointed dream? Next she’d be eating peanut butter sandwiches with him on a checked picnic blanket while he played the pan flute.
“Where are you taking me?” she whispered in demand, afraid to raise her voice still.
“Somewhere safer.”
“And warmer, I hope,” she muttered.
“Ashla, this is serious, okay? If we have to freeze out here in order to stay safe, then that’s what we will do!”
“That makes no friggin’ sense!” she snapped back at him. “You can’t call freezing to death staying safe!”
Trace winced when he realized she had a point. He had spoken to her like a child, and she deserved to get mad at him for expecting her to simply shut up and accept the simplistic demand without question. He wasn’t used to seeing so much fear in a person unless it was a child. Not that that was any excuse. He had already acknowledged that Ashla had every right to be frightened and thrown off by the unexplained things happening to her.
The unexplained things he was supposed to explain.
“Okay, here’s the condensed version of all this,” he said as he hurried her onward, watching frequently over his shoulder. “Human beings aren’t the only upright walking species on the planet. There are other races…You could call them supernatural races. That’s how your culture would see them, anyway. We exist, we have lives, jobs, cultures, and we just happen to have special abilities that most humans don’t.”
“Like the power to heal?”
Trace drew up short, turning quickly to look at her. She was shivering despite her jacket, huddling in on herself for warmth. He hadn’t even grabbed his own coat and could offer her nothing more.
Just the same, her quick retort about how her ability to heal fell under the category of supernatural ability made him realize she had been paying much closer attention than he had been giving her credit for all of this time.
“Sometimes. In our species that’s a very, very rare ability. Although that could have something to do with how we heal pretty fast as a race.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” she said, clearly referring to the speed he had healed at early on in their relationship.
Trace cocked his head curiously and looked at her. “I didn’t think you’d be this quick to accept all of this. Honestly, I thought you’d be freaking out by now.”
“Are you kidding? After running around in this postapocalyptic hell for God knows how long? I’m ready to believe any explanation at this point. It sure beats no explanation at all. And I’m not saying I’m not completely freaked out, either, because after watching you disappear like that, I have to say I’m really doubting my sanity, but…well, I don’t see what choice I have. Besides, being born a freak makes me obligated to be more tolerant of other freaks.”
“You aren’t a freak, and neither am I. You are a woman who has a side of herself she hasn’t learned about yet, that’s all. And I am a man who is one of an entire race of people who are just like us.”
That seemed to arrest her shivers and her attention as her eyes widened a great deal. “‘Us?’ And just before, you said ‘our.’ ‘Our species.’ Are you saying that I’m from—from people like you? And just what exactly are you?”
Trace sighed. He’d never messed up his language use so much in his life until he had met this woman. And damn if she didn?
??t catch him every time.
“Shadowdwellers. We’re called Shadowdwellers. The name comes from the fact that we can’t live in the light.”
“Any light?” she gasped.
“Save moonlight,” he stipulated. “Weak candle glow is a possibility depending on circumstances, but anything stronger is crippling and disfiguring. On exposure to light, a ’Dweller will die in a matter of minutes.”
“Oh my God. You mean you’ve never been in sunlight?”
He shook his head, trying to understand her shock and disbelief. He saw no special qualities in sunlight to be enjoyed. He didn’t see reason for her reaction.
“Well, then, I’m certainly not one of-of you. Anyway, I can’t be. I know my parents. Trust me when I say they are as Christian white American human as they come. And I run around in sunlight all the time, so that proves that.”
“You are a half-breed, Ashla,” he countered as gently as he could, taking hold of her arm and bringing her forward through the snow again. “Your mother had an affair with one of us and conceived you as a result. She admitted to it to Magnus. He’s one of the ones you met when they came for me.”
“My mother had a what? Oh.” She burst out laughing. “Please! You clearly don’t know my mother. Mom has a cross in one hand and a Bible up her butt. She is religious and devout from tip to toe.”
“Perhaps she is now. But she was also once a woman who had a forbidden liaison with a total stranger. In fact, I understand it lasted two months. In alleys. On the street. Cars. Vestibules…”
“Stop! Just stop!” Ashla had to cover her ears as she halted once more. “Okay, that’s just gross!”
“I don’t under—”
“My mother!” She removed a hand from her ear to point a finger in his face. “My mother would never have sex in a vestibule! She’s an uptight, rigid, cold-hearted bitch who’d sooner castrate a man mentally and physically than she would climb up on him and fuck him! Don’t you tell me about my mother. I know exactly who she is!”
“Clearly you don’t, or you would know that you are only half human.”
Demon. Devil’s child. Spawn of Satan. The names reeled through her mind in her mother’s ceaseless voice. Sophia had called her those things so often; every time she’d forced her to her knees to pray for a soul her mother swore was damned no matter what. A demon put his seed inside me, forcing me to birth an imp into God’s world!
Was it because she had known that her father hadn’t fathered her? All of her life, had her mother been blaming her for her own sins?
“And as for sunlight, Magnus believes that your human half allows for that. He also thinks you wouldn’t be so thin and pale, nor so weak in bone and muscle mass if you stayed out of the light.”
“But I’ve been out of the light all this time,” she said a bit numbly. “I’m no different than I was before.”
“That’s because we aren’t in the real world, Ashla.”
Hell of a way to tell her, Trace thought bitterly, once more reaching to hurry her along. He began to explain the concept of ’scapes to her before she could even challenge him on his last remark. He told her everything, even how he and Magnus believed she had gotten thrown into Fade during the accident.
“There are two occupants of Shadowscape,” he said. “Us and the Lost. The Lost are humans who are trapped in a coma. Their spirits wander this realm as if they live here, completely unaware of the state they are in. You are in Fade, but you are also Lost, Ashla. In Realscape, your body is lying in a deep coma. It has been for two years.”
“Years!” She jerked away from him and laughed on the edge of hysteria. “But it’s only been a few weeks. I remember!”
“Do you? Everything? And time doesn’t move here like it does in Realscape. Sometimes it’s longer, others it comes up shorter. It makes up its own rhyme and reason.”
“But that makes no sense,” she argued. Trace could hear the rising upset in her voice and saw the swim of tears in her eyes. “What about Cristine? The others? Are they all in comas, too? Why don’t I see any of these other Lost?”
“Because Lost can’t see each other, or ’Dwellers, for that matter. Not usually. That’s why Baylor was so surprised by you.”
“You were, too,” she said softly.
“Yeah. In a great many ways.” He didn’t want to, but he had to tell her about Cristine and her friends, so he made it quick and succinct. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. He expected anything, but couldn’t prepare himself for the way her legs seemed to just fold beneath her, dropping her numbly to her knees. It was like watching all of her spirit deflate in a single explosive moment. Trace quickly kneeled in front of her, reaching to pull her awkward and wobbly figure into his secure embrace. “Jei li,” he said gently against her hair, “we have no time to mourn. Not while there is so much danger. I’m sorry, but you have to get up.”
“What does it matter?” she asked him numbly. “I’m as good as dead anyway.” She turned to look at him suddenly. “You knew all of this. You know I’m just a ghost. You…you…”
“No! No, honey, don’t even think it!” he said fiercely. “You are no ghost. No wraith. You are as real to me as anything. I never once thought that I could expend myself with you and just walk away without conscience! I would never use anyone in such a way! Never! In Shadowscape, Shadowdwellers are as real to one another as we are outside of it.”
“But you didn’t know I was a Shadowdweller, did you? Not until recently.”
“You only have my word for evidence, but bear in mind I came here to bring you back. I came to teach you how to get back to your body, how to Unfade like we do. It’s your Shadow half that is trapped here, and your human half left alone in Realscape. But the very fact that you ended up in Alaska with your body says you are still very much connected to it. I will bring you out of this place, jei li, and I will face you in the Realscape just as I face you now. I will still want you there just the same as I did in that post office. Nothing has or will change that. Not unless you want it to change. Do you understand me?”
Ashla didn’t know what to believe. Her mind was overrun with data. Thoughts both awful and amazing swam through her. But through it all, the one thing that sang out truly to her was the sincerity she felt radiating off him like a nimbus. The sensation that she could see into his very thoughts returned to her as it had several times before. Any ideas she had of him using her and easily discarding her afterward like some kind of blow-up sex toy completely vanished. Even as her experience-scarred psyche tried to lecture her to beware, every deep instinct in her told her that he wasn’t capable of anything so dishonorable and low. She actually began to feel bad for thinking it in the first place.
She felt dizzy with information, possibilities, and the ever-present fear that now seemed more justified than ever. She didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. What she ended up doing was simply following his lead as he urged her forward through the cold. She was looking at the ground as they went, so it was only a minute before she realized they were leaving tracks in the snow.
“Can’t they follow easily?” she asked dumbly.
“Yes. But not for long.”
“I don’t—”
“Watch,” he said, drawing her up close in the darkness of the tree line. “This takes a lot of focus and energy, jei li, so I need you to be very still.”
He felt her nod as he wrapped his arms around her, bringing her tightly flush against his body. Just like when she had healed him, Trace needed as much contact with her as possible. It helped that she clung to him tightly in response to his hold. Maybe not for his skip, but it helped him because he felt a rush of immediate relief to feel her willingly touch him. There was an acceptance to it that he needed, for some reason. Then he pushed it all aside and focused on the shadows trail he was going to skip through with her. He would never have tried this with a human being, but she was half Shadow according to Magnus, and that was hopefully going to be enough.
Ashla tried h
er best not to just stand there and shake like a California fault line, but there was little else for her to do, and she dared any other normal girl on the planet to have her life totally turned upside down and face it with steady hands five seconds later.
Her sister was dead and her mother wasn’t. When she had thought the world had been destroyed, she had been devastated by one and wickedly at peace with the other. She had felt bad about that, actually. What kind of person is so detached from the woman that gave birth to them that she means nothing to them in death?
Her brothers and sister had been taught for years to shun Ashla, to treat her like the devil her mother preached that she was, but Cristine had never stepped into line. She had somehow managed to walk the line between avoiding their mother’s religious psychosis and keeping a place for her sister in her heart. As for her brothers, her oldest brother had had his own mind by the time their mother’s accusations started when Ashla was five. While he had not agreed with Sophia’s fanatic beliefs, neither had he ever taken a stand for his sister. He had just sat quietly by as Ashla’s life turned into hell on earth. Her other brother, however, was cut right from their mother’s ass.
Ashla shuddered and locked the thought away, as well as the awful memories that came with it. She focused instead on the feel of Trace’s cold body near her own. It was only then she realized he must be freezing without a jacket on, and the proof was under her hands. He had never felt so cold to her before.
Just then the strangest sensation rippled through her entire body. It was like a pull from inside at first, but then it flashed like the sharp heat she felt when Trace touched her breasts. She flushed, embarrassed as it made her squirm, and then everything inside her turned light and warm. Trace’s cold body seemed to fade away against her, but just as quickly it returned. She opened her eyes and realized the entire landscape had changed. She turned to look, but he tugged her back around just in time for her to see everything haze to gray and then reappear back into the crisp white of snow and the even crisper cold.