Chapter 24
Quinn
Just this once, Torrent let me drive. I couldn’t really see that as an act of faith when he hadn’t had a whole lot of choice in the situation, but having my hands on the steering wheel and my foot on the gas pedal reinvigorated my sense of freedom.
I was tracking down answers, maybe even a full solution to my problem. What the people I was going to see could tell me might give me complete freedom from the problems that’d been dogging me for the past few weeks… From the monsters that’d been attempting to claim me as their meal or their tool.
The desert landscape whizzed by on either side of the lonely road: plains of rippled orange-brown earth dotted with scruffy shrubs leading to ruddy cliffs that rose in the distance. There was no sound from outside other than the whistle of the wind over the jeep Torrent had acquired for us somehow or other. The air conditioning blasted a steady stream of cool air over us, but I could see how hot it was outside from the shimmer on the pavement ahead.
The sorcerers had their sort-of ranch in a secluded valley just beyond the nearest of the cliffs ahead of us. We’d already left Lance in the shadows about a mile back, watching the road well beyond the influence of any enslaving magic. Crag was scanning the landscape from the backseat while Torrent checked his phone next to me and nodded to the road ahead.
“The road will be pretty rough since no one but them comes out here, hardly a road at all, but the jeep should be able to handle it. I don’t think whatever shadowkind guards they have posted around the settlement will stop you when you’re alone in the car. You know what to do if the sorcerers turn out to be hostile.”
I nodded, my chest constricting a little. I might enjoy the chance to take the wheel, but I didn’t love the fact that none of my men could stay right by my side for this meeting. Sorcerers saw shadowkind as enemies at worst and slaves at best, not as friends or lovers. They’d be even more wary of my men if they’d heard about the recent killings like the guy I’d talked to before had. If I turned up with a couple of shadowkind companions, they’d definitely be unhappy.
“Shout really loud,” I said. “I think I can handle that.”
“And we’ll keep watch from our vantage point,” Crag put in. “We’ll be able to tell if anything’s really wrong.”
“As long as I don’t go inside.” I thought I should be able to manage that. How likely were the sorcerers to want a stranger poking around in their homes?
“If you get a bad feeling, you can just leave,” Torrent reminded me. “We don’t know for sure this group will be able to help you at all. There’s no point in taking any more of a risk than you already are just by coming out here.”
“I know.”
It was late in the afternoon now, the shadows stretching long, and he still hadn’t gotten any word from Rollick. I didn’t know if that was a good sign, meaning the demon and our other enemies were still totally occupied with their clash, or a bad sign, meaning the other shadowkind had managed to batter him beyond capability of communication.
Either way, no one would be expecting to find me out here. If we faced any danger, it’d come from the sorcerers and the shadowkind they commanded.
As the cliffs loomed closer, Crag stiffened in the back seat. I eased up on the gas before he’d even spoken.
“There’s a being up ahead,” he said. “I can only sense it faintly from here. It’s staying still—I think it’s a lesser shadowkind, but it feels large and strong.”
Torrent made a face. “They have guards, as we expected. I was hoping not so far out, but I guess it’s not surprising.”
I pulled over onto the side of the road and stopped completely. “Will you still be able to get close enough to see what’s happening?”
He studied the sheer hills that framed the shallow valley we couldn’t yet peer into. “There’s a lot of high terrain. I think we should be able to find a spot where we can look down into the valley from the shadows while avoiding any sentries. But it might take us a minute or two to get to you from there.” He paused and glanced over at me, his eyes darkening. “We don’t have to do this. We can go back to the island and make other plans.”
I inhaled slowly and touched my pocket with my old multitool, the one that’d helped me fix so many problems much smaller than the one I was currently facing. I had that. I had the steak knife I’d stolen from one of my hotel dinners and my silver pen-dagger in the other pocket. I had the moves ingrained from my self-defense classes.
And I was wearing my silver-and-iron vest, concealed by a fresh tee, which would make it difficult for any lesser shadowkind and even most higher to hurt me. Torrent had said it should block any persuasive vibes if the sorcerers had managed to enslave a being like a succubus or the siren who’d manipulated me on the hotel roof.
I’d spent the past ten days hiding away in Rollick’s luxurious hotel, accomplishing nothing except putting on an inadvertent porn show for my captor and tapping into skills I didn’t really want. I had to do something, had to try to take control over my life again, or what was the point in having gotten free at all?
I couldn’t expect my shadowkind men to take all the risks on my behalf. That wasn’t remotely fair.
“This is our best chance,” I said. “And we don’t know how long the shadowkind after me will be distracted for. Anything we do after today will only be more dangerous.”
Torrent didn’t argue with any of my points. He simply waited for me to work through my thoughts, easing one of his tentacles over to hug my knee. I rested my hand on the sinuous limb.
“We could try to hide in the vehicle, make ourselves as inobtrusive as possible,” Crag said abruptly.
I glanced over my shoulder, raising my eyebrows. “As much as I’d like to bring you with me, I don’t think inobtrusive is a word that could ever describe you.” I turned to face the cliffs again. “These sorcerers have managed to avoid getting attacked so far. They must have a pretty good security system. I’ll go in alone. They can’t do anything worse to me than the monsters chasing me want to do.”
They had no reason to want to hurt me, after all. I was just a fellow human seeking help.
“Then we’ll part ways here,” Torrent said, but he reached for me first, his fingers sliding along my jaw and tugging me into a kiss. The press of his mouth against mine felt like a promise and a plea that I’d return to him safely. I kissed him back hard, a sudden swell of emotion nearly overwhelming me.
There was a lot wrong with my life right now. There were so many things I wanted to fix. But somehow in the middle of the chaos, I’d found these three brutal but incredible men who’d lit me up inside and followed me into every challenge we’d faced.
Crag grunted from behind me, where he couldn’t easily mimic Torrent’s farewell gesture, but he took my hand and kissed the knuckles briefly. Then they both vanished into the shadows. I knew they’d have leapt from the car immediately to dart as quickly as they could over the landscape, avoiding the sorcerers’ enslaved shadowkind guards.
I pushed on the gas again with a growl of the engine. The increasingly imperceptible lane led straight ahead between the two jagged hills and then downward with a slight curve into the broad, shallow valley between them. The jeep’s wheels jostled over potholes and bumps, but the vehicle managed all right. Torrent had picked it well.
As I came around the bend, four single-story adobe buildings came into view around a larger two-story structure, all of them blending into the orange-y earth around them.
I hadn’t seen any sign of sentries myself, human or monstrous, but probably some shadowy presence had taken note of me, decided I wasn’t a terrible threat, and simply informed the inhabitants of my approach. I was still at least a hundred yards away from the nearest building, dust spurting up from under the tires, when a few figures emerged from the homes and headed up the road toward me. One of them raised her hands for me to stop.
Easing my foot on the brake, I ground to a halt there on what was pretty much just bare dirt at this point and put the jeep into park for the time being. Then I got out, grabbing my messenger bag and slinging it over my shoulder automatically, staying close to the vehicle. Even with the sun having sunk behind the western hill, the air was hot enough to bring sweat beading across my skin.
It was an older woman, her coiled hair a mix of white and steel-gray, and a younger couple who’d come out to meet me. The older woman, who was the one who’d motioned to me, appeared to be the leader. She strode a little closer with the man and the other woman, who I figured were in their thirties, following just behind.
“What are you doing here?” the first woman asked in a dry but commanding voice, squinting at me.
My pulse thumped faster. This was the deciding moment—whether they believed my story would determine whether I got any help from them at all.
“I heard that there were people who lived out here who had certain… skills. Skills I’d like to learn about, because I didn’t get a chance to from my own family before I lost them.”
It was a simplified version of the truth, because the last thing I wanted was anyone talking about a visit from a girl with a transplanted heart. The full story was too complicated anyway.
The man folded his arms over his chest. “Who told you that?”
“It was… it was in some notes my parents left behind,” I lied. I wasn’t going to tell them a shadowkind had directed me here. “I know about the rifts, and the monsters that come through them, and that it’s possible to control them. Sometimes I feel like I should be able to, but I didn’t have anyone to teach me. I don’t even know if I want to do that—I just need to understand this power I’ve got so I can figure out what to do about it.”
The three figures shifted on their feet, obviously uneasy. But their sentries hadn’t given them any reason to worry about me, and from what I’d heard from and about other sorcerers, my story was plausible. The only question was whether they’d want to bother spending the time talking with me.
Before they could answer, a little boy came running across the uneven terrain. He couldn’t have been more than four. He grabbed the younger woman’s leg and stared at me, then up at the others. “Mommy, Daddy, who’s this lady?”
My gut twisted with guilt at the lie I was about to tell, but I grabbed the opening he’d given me. These were people who stole the free will of shadowkind beings and forced them to do their bidding. I shouldn’t feel bad about manipulating them just slightly in turn.
“I was about his age when I lost my mom and dad,” I said, letting my voice turn rough with all the losses I had actually faced.
I could tell the tactic landed as I’d intended. The young woman’s face fell. She squeezed her son’s shoulder. “Go back to the house, Jonah. Ask Grandpa to read you a book.” As the little boy scampered off, she returned her attention to me. “Your parents were sorcerers.”
I nodded. “But I haven’t been able to piece together much… I only just found some of their writing that made a little more sense of things I heard and saw when I was a little kid. My memories are all kind of a blur, though, and the journals didn’t give many details.”
The three sorcerers exchanged a glance. The older woman took the lead again. “This isn’t a good time for pursuing an interest in the magic of the shadows. There are monsters hunting people like us. You’d do better to forget about it.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t think I can. I have this strange… feeling inside me. It’s been getting stronger. Maybe if I could just get rid of it—is that even possible?”
She frowned and rubbed her mouth. “There is… Overseas, out where there are times when the sun never rises for days… Norway, I think? I’ve heard there’s an enclave for sorcerers there, a place where those without power go when they’re hoping to spark it in themselves. I don’t personally know anyone who’s taken that route instead of having it through their family line, though, so maybe it doesn’t work. But if it does, it’s possible someone there would know how to snuff out a power that already exists too.”
My heart leapt, although I wasn’t sure how I was going to get all the way to Norway. Minor details. “Okay. I guess that’s a start. I don’t know how soon I’d be able to actually look into that, though. Since I’m already here… is there anything you’d be willing to tell me about how you work with and control your power?”
The older woman sighed. “Since you are already here, I suppose we could talk a little. I’m not sure how much we could tell you, but you could ask a few questions. Come over to the courtyard.” She motioned to the man, who from the similar dark eyes and hooked shape of their noses I suspected was her son. “Ivan, bring some lemonade or something. It’s hot enough to invite the devil out here.”
I followed the three sorcerers into the circle of their houses on cautious feet, hoping my shadowkind protectors still had me in their sights.