Reap the Shadows (Steel & Stone Book 4)

  The reaper rematerialized only feet away, his scythe swinging for her neck.

  She spun and blades of power whipped out from her hands. Blue and purple fire twisted together, sparking with orange flames where they touched. He wasn’t ready. His hasty shield evaporated in a burst of orange light, and the blades of multicolored fire ripped into him. His body crumpled to the floor.

  She flicked her hands, casting away the deadly ribbons of fire. Bloodlust pounded in her veins, infusing her body, unsated. Killing him wasn’t enough. She hadn’t gotten to put her claws into him and rip the life out of him with her own hands. Gingerly stepping closer, she nudged his remains with her toe. He was truly dead.

  A loud clatter behind her made her spin around. People were climbing to their feet from behind the table. They were watching her, their eyes wide.

  She tensed, her fingers flexing. Her lips peeled back from her teeth. They were staring. She didn’t like it. Fury rose in her, aggression building behind it. She didn’t like their eyes on her, their challenging stares. How dare they meet her gaze? They should have been cowering, not challenging her power.

  The bloodlust intensified, tightening around her chest, filling her head. She would teach them not to stare. She would rip out their eyes so they never made that mistake again.

  “Piper.”

  Her head spun to the side, gaze landing on the woman slowly approaching her.

  “You killed the reaper,” the woman said, walking sedately toward the bloody body on the floor. She kept her eyes passively lowered as she gestured toward it. “There’s something glowing there. Do you see it?”

  Piper looked and saw a red glow shining through the reaper’s shirt. Her eyes narrowed. Stepping heedlessly in the pool of blood, she pinched his shredded shirt between her claws and shook it. A round metal disc the size of her palm slid out from the torn inner pocket and landed on the floor with a loud clank.

  She sprang back, expecting a deadly spell to unleash, her shimmering dairokkan rippling behind her. But the disc lay inert, glowing brightly but otherwise harmless. She hovered, rigid with readiness for a moment longer, then leaned down and plucked it out of the gory mess. She turned the disc over in her hands. It was very plain, unremarkable except for the glow emanating from the edges, creating a flat ring of light.

  She looked up at the woman waiting nearby and her brain belatedly plucked up an identity: her mother.

  With the realization that she’d forgotten whom her mother was, the shaded state trapping her mind popped. Aches, pain, fear, and horror hit her like an out-of-control train and she swayed where she stood, heart racing and muscles trembling. Swallowing hard, she pulled herself together and looked down at the disc again to hide her sudden sick awareness. She’d lost it again. She’d been planning to kill the Gaian council because they’d stared at her. What kind of monster had she become?

  Mona stepped closer to her and lightly touched her arm. Piper kept staring at the disc. Her mother was a trained, experienced Consul—of course she’d recognized that her daughter had shaded like a daemon. She’d distracted Piper from her targets, redirecting her attention to something else—a classic diffusion technique all Consuls learned for handling shaded daemons.

  Shame dragged at her. That she’d needed to be pacified like an out-of-control daemon when she’d spent her whole life training to do that very task was humiliating.

  As she turned the disc in her hands, barely seeing it, she realized there were strange distortions in the light. Focusing, she spun it again more slowly, then looked at her mother.

  “Do you see that?” she asked.

  Mona nodded, brow furrowed. “Put it on the table.”

  They hurried to the table and Piper set it down. As the light spread across the flat surface, the glow intensified and she saw that the ring of light seemed to be inscribed with characters in a language unfamiliar to her—a message written in the light.

  “That’s an Underworld language,” her mother said, leaning down for a closer look. “I can almost read it ...”

  Mona reached out to slide the disc closer, but as soon as her fingers touched it, the red glow blinked out. She snatched her hand back, but it was too late; the message had vanished.

  Piper started to pick up the disc again but stabbing pain shot up her broken arm. Stifling a gasp, she lowered it to her side and used her other hand to retrieve the disc. It remained as inert as an oversized metal washer.

  “It had an Underworld language on it?” she asked.

  “Yes. I studied daemon languages extensively while I was a Consul.” Mona shook her head. “I admit I’m a bit rusty. I only recognized a few words.”

  “Ahem.”

  Piper and Mona looked up. Walter was giving them a very strange look. Piper blinked a couple times. With the discovery of the disc, she’d almost forgotten that the rest of the Council was there. Aside from Walter, who looked mostly composed, the others appeared shell-shocked to varying degrees, staring at Jace’s body, the bodies of the guards, or Piper’s less human attributes. She twitched her shoulders uncomfortably, wanting to shift back to her human form to escape their stares, but somehow that felt like admitting she was a freak that should hide what she was.

  Her stomach twisted at the memory of her daemon response to their stares—the cold desire to rip them apart.

  “Did you see the message spell embedded in this disc?” Mona asked Walter. “It would appear that Jace has been communicating in secret with someone outside our walls.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s quite suspicious,” he said, waving his hand. His eyes never left Piper. “I would like to know about this—this new you, Piper. You look like a daemon.”

  “Only half,” she muttered, shuffling away from the table. So far only daemons had seen her half-daemon form, and she didn’t like being under the scrutiny of haemons—particularly daemon-hating ones. “You should see what the full-blooded ones look like.”

  “What caste are you?”

  “Walter,” Mona cut in. “My daughter is not a specimen in a zoo. Show some respect.”

  “I was just—”

  “Your questions can wait. Were you not watching that fight? She’s injured and exhausted.” Mona stepped between Piper and the Gaians, partially blocking her from their view. “Certainly more pressing is the situation with Jace. He was clearly a reaper spy, and you know that reapers only obey one daemon.”

  “It would have been preferable to keep him alive,” Walter said, finally pulling his stare from Piper to focus on Mona. “We could have questioned him.”

  “How were you planning to restrain and question a reaper, Walter?” Mona snapped.

  “We could have—”

  She slashed a hand through the air as she cut him off. “Don’t be ridiculous. Obviously he was too dangerous to let live. Look at them!” She pointed at the murdered soldiers. “They died minutes ago at this monster’s hands and we were helpless to stop him. As such, the next step is obvious. We need to check our entire membership for daemon spies. Who knows how many of the major families have infiltrated our ranks?”

  Piper nodded in solemn agreement, silently cheering her mother on. Just a few weeks ago, Walter had been bullying Mona into silence, but now not only was Mona taking control from him, but she was diffusing suspicions of a Hades infiltration by implicating the other families—which, for all they knew, could be true.

  “While you take care of that,” she continued loudly over his protests, “I will take this news straight to the Command Staff. A phone call will not do. They must know straightaway, before our enemies discover that we are on to them. I will leave immediately.”

  Walter opened and closed his mouth.

  “Excellent,” Mona said. “Piper, come. We have no time to waste.”

  Walter blinked dumbly as Mona put her arm around Piper and led her right back out the door. As it swung closed, Piper glanced back to see Walter staring at her again, his eyes feverish with fascinated greed.

  The d
oor clanged shut, cutting off her view. Jace’s metal disc was still in her hand so she stuffed it in her back pocket.

  Mona squeezed her middle.

  “Piper, sweetheart,” she whispered. “You’re white as a ghost. Are you hurt?”

  “I ... well, my arm is broken, but that’s it. Just pretty shaken up, I guess.” She touched her cheek and felt the hot puffiness around her eye. Her whole head throbbed as if an invisible sledgehammer were silently pounding her skull.

  “You’re going to have a terrible black eye.” She paused and her stare slipped from Piper’s eyes to her forehead where there were three iridescent teardrop scales.

  Piper swallowed and gestured jerkily at her body. “This was part of learning to control my magic so it didn’t kill me. I had to—”

  Mona quickly shook her head, giving Piper another squeeze. “You don’t have to explain anything right now, sweetheart. Let’s just get out of here before there are any more surprises.”

  Piper nodded and closed her eyes, turning her focus inward to cut the line of magic feeding her daemon form. Tingles washed over her body and exhaustion hit her like a battering ram. She leaned hard on her mother, breathing deeply. All her aches and pains doubled unpleasantly and her broken arm throbbed in agony.

  Together, they headed to the stairwell and up the stairs. At the very top, they exited the stairwell into a short hallway. The door at the end opened out onto the roof of the building. Golden light from the setting sun blasted their eyes, and it was a moment before Piper could see anything. The rooftop was abandoned. Clamping down on a surge of anxiety, she led Mona into the open to wait.

  “Piper ...” Mona looked around the rooftop in confusion. “We should treat your injuries. Let’s go downstairs and—”

  “We need to wait here,” she cut in tersely, anxiety roiling in her gut. “They’ll be here soon.”

  Her mother eyed her for a second, then nodded. The minutes ticked by but Piper, concentrating on standing despite her exhausted, trembling muscles, said nothing else. Mona removed the sweater she was wearing over her prim white blouse and helped Piper make a sling for her broken arm. She then put her arm around her daughter, providing silent support—both physical and emotional.

  Piper stared at the dark, empty sky. Where were they? Ash and the others should have been waiting for her by now. Why hadn’t they come once it became clear that Jace wasn’t answering the signal to pick up his message? Something had gone wrong. All that was left was to find out how badly it had gone wrong.

  Twenty minutes of tense, anxious silence passed before she heard the whoosh of wings. The air rippled and Ash appeared as he cast aside his cloaking spell, wings spread as he landed on the rooftop ten paces away. His form shimmered, wings and tail vanishing as he slid back into glamour. Zwi hung off his shoulder, her golden eyes weary.

  Detaching from her mother’s hold, Piper rushed across the roof, barely managing not to throw herself into his arms from relief. She stopped just short, staring up at him.

  “What happened?” she asked, stumbling over the words.

  He gave his head a short shake. “It sure as hell didn’t go as planned.” Glancing at her arm in the sling, he lightly touched the side of her face beside her swollen eye. “Who hurt you?”

  “That damn reaper spy. But I killed him, so ...” She shrugged.

  His face tightened. “I was afraid that wasn’t all of them.”

  “All of who?”

  “All the reapers. Instead of ambushing one reaper, we were ambushed by two reapers and several squads of Gaians with some interesting weapons. The reapers had convinced the Gaians that we were there to attack them. It was a fucking mess.”

  “You had to fight Gaians?”

  “We did our best not to kill them, but they were trying to kill us.”

  “Did you kill the reapers?”

  “Only one. The other teleported who knows where. But we need to get out of here before he comes back with some friends.”

  Piper nodded hastily and looked over her shoulder. Her mother stood where she’d left her, watching Ash with worried eyes. Piper waved her over, and Mona cautiously approached. She couldn’t blame her mother. Ash’s expression was neutral but his eyes were arctic, verging on black.

  Piper cleared her throat. “Mom, you remember Ash, right?”

  Ash stared stonily back at Mona when she gave him a hesitant nod as a greeting. Piper doubted he had forgiven Mona for putting her life in danger—not to mention torturing him with an ultrasound speaker during their first encounter.

  He tilted his head toward Zwi and she jumped off his shoulder. Black fire burst around her, making Mona jump. The full-sized dragon stretched her wings and gave Mona an icy glare that made her step backward fearfully.

  “Zwi,” Piper chastised. “Be nice.”

  Zwi grumbled, flicking her tail back and forth.

  Using her good arm, Piper helped Mona climb onto Zwi’s back and instructed her on the best position for good stability. Mona stroked Zwi’s mane with trembling fingers, wonder shining in her eyes. In half a lifetime spent working with daemons and half working against them, had she ever experienced a moment like this?

  Piper smiled a little at her mother’s reaction and reached up to climb onto Zwi behind her. Before she could, Ash appeared behind her. He looped an arm around her middle and pulled her away, guiding her around in front of him. She looked up in surprise, meeting his dark eyes. Her stomach fluttered, heat rising in her as she pressed against his chest.

  Making sure her injured arm was safely tucked between then, he pulled her closer and boosted her up. She quickly clamped her legs around his hips when she recognized what was coming. He dropped glamour, little shocks of electricity from his magic teasing her skin, and stepped to the edge of the roof as his wings unfurled.

  Wrapping her good arm around him, she closed her eyes and pressed her face against his neck. He stepped off the edge. The wind instantly whipped her hair around her head as they plunged downward. His wings caught the air and they steadied, gliding smoothly. She heard her mother’s startled cry and knew Zwi must have taken flight behind Ash.

  His arms were tight around her, warm and strong. She held him close, her face still pressed against his neck. The reaper was dead, and it looked even more like Samael was definitely involved with the Gaians. The metal disc with its hidden message was in her pocket, a piece of hard proof, but unless they could discover what it said, it might not convince the Command Staff of anything.

  And if they couldn’t convince the Gaian commanders, there would be nothing stopping Samael from whatever it was he was planning next.

  CHAPTER 20

  UNLIKE Brinford and Fairglen, Habinal City’s ley line wasn’t in the middle of nowhere beyond the city limits. It ran directly through the city, cutting it almost in half. Humans obviously hadn’t known about the ley line when they’d built the city, and most humans still didn’t know ley lines existed. If they did, they probably wouldn’t have been living in an apartment building with the line running through their living room.

  Her guess that one of the daemons would know how to get to Habinal City had been right. Ash had brought them right into the middle of the metropolis, exiting the line on the east bank of the wide, slow river that meandered through downtown, perpendicular to the ley line. While she’d waited for him to go back and bring the next person through, she’d knelt on the gravel bank and stared at the dark waters. Light from nearby buildings rippled across the surface in dancing spots of gold like fireflies. The sun had set an hour ago, and in the darkness, she’d imagined that river was as clean and clear as the crystalline blue waters of the Overworld, filled with life and ancient power.

  Ash had brought Seiya next, and she had healed Piper’s injuries while he’d fetched the others. Strangely, once the entire group had been gathered on the bank, it had been Mona who’d taken control. She’d immediately recognized where they were and instructed everyone to follow her. She’d led them a do
zen blocks down the river, past a wide bridge devoid of traffic in the late hour, to a strip of tall buildings—some hotels, some hotels converted into apartments. With bemused daemons and daughter in tow, she’d marched into one of them, announced herself as “Mona Santo, Vice-President of Mother Earth Corp.,” and demanded a room.

  Now Piper was sitting on the plush cushions of a window seat, staring through the glass at the vista of the river and buildings beyond. Behind her, the large room held two queen size beds, a sofa, two chairs, and a mini kitchen. A luxury bathroom waited beyond one of the doors.

  A nostalgic sadness weighed on her. Seeing her mother bossing around daemons and leading them to a safe, comfortable place to spend the night had brought back memories of the confident, caring mother she’d known before their long separation. Mona had been a very good Consul. She didn’t ruffle easily and had a sincere, easy-going manner that could diffuse most situations before they went bad—as she’d demonstrated while Piper was shaded. She was pretty sure that her own mediation skills would have been a hell of a lot better had her mother been around during the early stages of her training.

  Ash and Seiya stood by the kitchenette, watching Lyre pull various bottles out the mini fridge, excitedly describing the various drinks he could mix for them. Kiev was surreptitiously exploring the room, touching the posh bed covers with a sort of soft amazement on his face. The hotel room reminded Piper of the Consulate, but for many—especially a draconian used to prison cells in Asphodel—this kind of luxury was reserved for the very rich or the very lucky. She was pretty sure it wasn’t even the nicest suite the hotel had to offer.

  The dragonets were enjoying the room too. Zwi and Zala had tugged the overabundance of pillows on one of the beds into a big, fluffy nest. They were sprawled in the center, limbs and wings splayed blissfully as they slept. As Piper glanced over them with a little smile, she realized she counted three tails. It seemed Teva had braved the presence of strangers to join in on the group nap.