Chapter 14
Periwinkle
As Jonah drives toward the outskirts of the city, I squirm impatiently on my seat in the back of the van.
We shadowkind can examine the rift in its new location from the shadows without the human employees at the nearby factories noticing, but our vehicles and our mortal companions can’t lurk the same way. What if one of those strange shadowkind creatures emerges while the workers are, well, working?
What if it’s in a fighting mood?
Will we be able to drag it into the shadows with us before the mortals realize something odd is going on? Before it hurts any of them?
Raze materializes next to me so he can take my hand. The firm squeeze of his fingers settles my nerves a little.
“If any beings come through while people are around, you can try using that new aspect of your powers,” he suggests. “Why wouldn’t it affect the creatures even from the shadows? It’s not like emotions are at all corporeal.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Hail mutters from the opposite bench where he’s sitting stiffly, but I can tell from the currents of emotion coursing into me that he’s more uneasy than annoyed.
The rift’s relocation has thrown us all for a loop. Why did Rollick have to leave right now?
Of course, the new rift that popped up is probably more urgent than this one that simply took a hike. Even before the protections were in place, only a few creatures emerged in the course of a day. We shouldn’t need to worry about a deluge.
Jonah pulls the van into a parking lot outside a long, squat building that’s down the road from the factories along the edges of the city.
Half the letters have fallen off this business’s dented sign like gaps in a mouthful of teeth.
The rusted doorframe and grimy windows suggest no one’s been doing any business in there for quite a while, unless they’re selling dust bunnies.
As Jonah parks, the rest of us spill out into the shadows beneath the van. Mirage weaves through the darkness near me, as do Rollick’s assistants who joined us.
The shadowbloods who were helping out haven’t learned how to merge with the shadows the way we can—Zian told us that it’s possible that they simply can’t. I guess that’s one downside of being a shadowkind-human smoothie.
He and Riva stayed at our old base of operations to send a message to Rollick and prepare the warding supplies. They might be able to leave some silver and iron around the rift after the factory closes for the night.
Any metal items we plant will have to blend into the environment so the mortals don’t notice and move them. Whether we can protect the area at all depends on exactly where the portal has reformed.
The unsettlingly dithery energy of the rift wavers through my being. It’s still faint, but it push-pulls me from a definite direction.
One of Rollick’s assistants takes charge, her voice warbled but understandable in our shadowy state. “We all go together. Stay close, avoid the mortals.”
We slink across the open ground, leaping between the splotches of darkness in the cracks in the concrete, beneath the leaves of a weed, along the edge of a chain-link fence. The tremor of dissonant energy gets stronger.
We come up on a thicker fence made of wooden posts with swaths of rippled metal in between. It’s easy enough to slip beneath it, but then I pause.
Several humans are walking across the cement yard on the other side. A couple are gabbing on their phones, one is getting into a truck, and a few others are shoving boxes into the back of that truck and another beside it.
The rift looms over all of them, hovering a few feet above the ground some ten feet away from us along the fence. It only distorts the air slightly, so vague none of the mortals appear to have noticed, but I can see that it stretches up three times the height of the fence.
I think it’s gotten bigger with the move. All the better to toss creatures out at us?
Would it be too much to hope that the beasts stay small even if the portal didn’t?
The assistant who directed us heads toward the rift first. We circle around it, checking the ground nearby.
The terrain is all plain concrete and asphalt, a few small cracks here and there but nothing we could drop more than some tiny silver and iron beads into. That won’t ward off more than a shadowkind flea.
One of the other assistants speaks up in a doubtful voice. “There’s a strip of bare earth on the far side of the fence. We could bury some metals there.”
I tip my ephemeral head. “They’ll only help if we can stop the creatures from wandering in every other direction instead. Could we surround the entire fence?”
Raze speaks up gruffly. “Then we’d be shutting the beasts in with the mortals. It might be better to let them roam and then collect them after they’ve moved farther away.”
Mirage darts past me with a shimmer of his upbeat energy. “The mixed-up beings are usually in a good mood when they first come through. We have a little time.”
Anywhere from hours to days, true. We just have to make sure the warped shadowkind move away from the city rather than deeper into it, and that they don’t appear too blatantly in front of the humans working here before that.
Our problems have expanded even more than the rift has.
Whatever the problem, we can figure it out. I lift my spirits through sheer force of will. “Maybe if we—"
One of the assistants flinches with a jolt of nervous shock that smacks me like a splash of lime juice. “What’s happening to it?”
The words have barely left her mouth when I see what she means. The rift is moving again—right now, before our eyes.
A wave of darkness courses out of the portal like it’s vomiting up a surge of shadow. Chunks of the spew flicker with a thicker blackness. A flurry of chaotic sensations rushes over me.
As I shudder, wondering if this might be the first time in my existence I entirely lose my appetite, the wave of shadow puke ripples through the yard.
The first human to see it yelps and scrambles away. The others turn to look and back up, swearing under their breaths.
Their fear smacks into me like the chilliest of unsweetened iced tea. Another shudder runs through my essence. “What do we do? How do we stop it?”
Raze lets out a growl. “I don’t know.”
Another assistant sputters. “We have to— Maybe the shadowbloods will know—”
He flits away from us toward Jonah’s van, I guess to reach out to our base camp for backup.
Which I suspect we’re going to need. The rift is still heaving out more condensed shadow, retching it all across the factory’s yard. The flood surges forward faster.
One of the workers isn’t able to dodge it fast enough. He yelps as the mass of darkness sweeps over him.
Through the warped shadows, his form twitches and flails. Pain lances from him through me.
A cry breaks from my throat. “It’s hurting them! We have to help him—help all of them.”
Hail’s voice sounds strained. “We don’t know what’ll happen to us if we touch that stuff.”
I leap forward. “I don’t care. We’re supposed to protect them from the rift. We can’t stand here while it suffocates them. I’m getting them out!”
Whatever’s happening in the shadows, it’s definitely not a carnival for the mortals. The man who got trapped in the wave seems to have deflated, his movements sluggish, but I know he’s alive. Discomfort still wafts off his form.
I plunge into the spewed shadow after him. The darkness prickles at my essence in a way I’ve never felt before, as if it’s nipping at the edges of my being, digging in and jerking out. I gird myself against the disturbing sensation and hurtle on toward the trapped man.
As I reach him, I focus on my physical form just enough to turn me slightly corporeal. My presence takes on enough heft to shove the man through the shadow vomit.
He stumbles and staggers. I ram into him again, as carefully as I can while still using enough force to move him.
My three shadowkind men dive in to join me.
“Keep pushing!” Raze hollers through the shadows. He propels the man toward the edge of the flood with a heave of his own.
“Sink or swim!” Mirage crows, his voice garbled, and appears to heft the man up and onward as if giving him a brief piggyback ride.
I make out Hail grumbling indistinctly, but he throws himself into the rescue effort too. The smack of his shoulder sends the man finally tumbling out the side of the growing torrent.
It’s still expanding. I leap out of the unnerving darkness, solidifying into physical form at the same time so I can grasp the man’s arm. “Come on! We have to get as far away from it as possible.”
The man gapes at me, probably wondering where the heck some turquoise-haired chick in a sundress came from and why I’m jumping to his rescue, but he keeps his wits enough to listen. As I yank at his elbow, he scrambles with me across the yard toward the factory building.
Footsteps thump against the pavement as my shadowkind men materialize around us. Yells reverberate from the other side of the building. My head snaps around to see a couple of Rollick’s assistants herding other workers farther away from the spilled shadow.
It’s still coming, surging forward like an endless gush of filmy toxic sludge. Before my eyes, the dark current collides with the back of the factory.
My breath stops in my throat. As far as I can tell, the strange shadows slide straight through the brick wall as if it’s not there.
But the bricks feel it. The mortar between them starts to crumble away. Little pock marks form in their surface like dimples—but not the cute kind.
“What the fuck is going on?” Hail says, staring alongside me.
The man we’ve been guiding sways on his feet and crumples over in a faint.
I don’t know if he blacked out because of the effects of the shadows or simply from shock. My pulse stutters. “We can’t leave him here.”
Raze is already springing forward to scoop the limp man into his muscular arms. He jerks his chin at us to motion us to keep running with him.
We skirt the building and dash out onto the street beyond just as the spreading spew of shadow churns straight through and across the road.
Cars honk and swerve. Gasps and shrieks reverberate from the other industrial buildings around us.
One SUV skids straight into the current and whirls around as if the tires have hit ice. I get a glimpse of the driver’s blanched face through the windshield.
As I whip around to help her, a familiar white van careens into view on the other side of the flood.
Rollick’s assistant made it to Jonah quickly. Our sorcerer brings the vehicle to a screeching halt. The doors have flown open before it’s even finished moving.
The two shadowbloods jump out and charge into the dark flood. I spot Zian wrenching open the SUV’s door so Riva can drag the woman out.
More shouts and tire screeches carry from beyond the next building. How far is the rift’s shadowy vomit going to spread?
“Let’s go pick up the pieces we can,” Mirage calls to us, and bounds toward the nearest side street.
Raze sets the unconscious man down a few buildings away from the current, and we all dash after the fox shifter. Mirage’s ears flash amid his red hair, but he manages to tuck them away as quickly as they emerged.
As we sprint around the hulking buildings, other sorts of unnerving noises reach my ears. There’s a metallic crashing sound, over and over as if someone is repeatedly driving their car into a wall. Then a hollow groan that sounds like something mechanical being torn in two.
Are the shadows from the rift throwing a temper tantrum now? How much worse is it going to get?
My feet and ankles sting with the pounding of my shoes against the ground. The pain must be echoing into my marked men, because Raze glances back at me with a concerned expression that seems to make Hail’s jaw clench.
“I’m fine!” I gasp out past the dryness in my mouth.
We hurtle out onto the next road over—and discover that the flood hasn’t made it this far after all.
It appears the wave of shadow brought at least a few shadowkind with it.
A couple of creatures are weaving between the parked cars, lunging at any mortals who venture out of the nearby buildings.
One that looks like a leopard with quills poking from its spots snarls and gnashes its teeth at the figures behind a first-floor window.
And in the middle of the street, jumping up and down on the roof of a truck that’s had its door ripped off, is a higher shadowkind who looks almost human.
Her corporeal form is a tall, gangly woman with a sharp jaw and sharper elbows. Her roughly chopped hair rustles with each hop.
She must have more strength than her normal human-like size would suggest, because her weight is denting the roof farther down with every jump, provoking that awful crashing sound. Or maybe that’s the effect of some supernatural power, I realize at a flash of cracking energy beneath her feet.
Out the back of her baggy jeans, a ridged crocodile-like tail lashes back and forth in time with her hopping, as if she’s using a very thick skipping rope.
She doesn’t seem to care that the mortals might see her monstrous feature or her powers. Maybe she’s the kind of troublemaker Rollick would have ordered to the academy if he found out about her. With no one around to ground her, she’s taking advantage of the sudden chaos.
Then, as I watch, the edges of her body quiver.
All at once, her hair shoots out twice as long, halfway down her back. Her pointed chin widens into a square-ish shape. Her eyes sink deeper, and her ribcage juts broader.
My heart stops.
She isn’t an ordinary shadowkind being, higher or not. She’s morphing like all the weird lesser creatures who’ve tumbled out of the strange rifts.