A spell barrier that kept me from the power of what I was.
You can believe that I lost it.
I struggled and I twisted. I fought and I kicked and I swore and I screamed. None of it made any difference. Trevor and Adrian sang a nasty spell, one that I’d heard before and liked even less this time. As soon as they started, golden ropes of spells appeared in the air, growing longer and thicker as they wound all around me. I was trussed up in no time and powerless to escape, just like a shifter I’d seen sacrificed when I infiltrated the Mages’ hive memory; just like Jessica and the guys had been in the fall.
And my blue shimmer was AWOL.
I didn’t stop trying to summon it, even though I knew it wasn’t going to answer. Meanwhile, Trevor and Adrian hauled me ever deeper into the vacant lot, the one that wasn’t very vacant after all. They joined in the chant with the other kid, making the globe overhead get bigger and brighter, the silhouettes inside moving with greater agitation. The ShadowEaters pressed against the barrier of the spell orb, so close that I could see their eyes.
They glowed orange, just like in my dream. They had no pupils, no irises, nothing but orange spell light shining like beacons where their eyes should have been. The ShadowEaters could have been just skins filled with orange spell light. It was like the light in Adrian’s eyes but a hundred times worse, and a thousand times more terrifying.
They were going to eat my shadow and destroy me, and there wasn’t one thing I could do about it.
Except panic. I had that covered.
And my terror only increased when I saw Kohana.
The Thunderbird shifter who had tried to betray my kind to the Mages the previous spring, who had attacked me in the fall, and who had worked with me under protest to destroy the Mages’ collective memory sauntered toward us, working his way through the broken bottles and discarded car fenders and busted furniture.
He still had dark hair and dark eyes, a secretive smile, and a tight pair of jeans. He was wearing a dark T-shirt this time, one that covered the feather tattoo I knew he had on his shoulder, and it seemed to me that his expression was a little bit mean.
Was he enchanted? I dared to hope, but there was no spell light around Kohana.
My heart stopped cold when I saw that he had the NightBlade, the weapon he had stolen from the Mages in November. He’d said then that he was going to destroy it, as it was the tool they used to cut the shadows away from the bodies of their victims, the better to offer sacrifices to the ShadowEaters. But he was back, he still had it, and it didn’t look damaged in the least.
Plus he held it up, as if intending to use it.
This was how they were going to complete the ceremony—they had the NightBlade. Kohana had brought it to them.
No! Kohana’s expression turned resolute, and my very bad feeling became forty-seven thousand times worse.
Because it didn’t take much to figure out whose shadow was the plat du jour.
THE SHADOWEATERS CLEARLY KNEW WHAT was going to happen. Their forms were moving more quickly, shifting and shimmering, vibrating with excitement and anticipation. The orb was being stretched in every direction as they fought to become free. And there was a point in the orb where they strained toward Kohana, their fingers grasping in the direction of the NightBlade.
Even though they were still inside that orb of spell light that had conjured them, I could hear them salivating, licking their lips and clicking their teeth together. I swear their bellies growled—even though they didn’t appear to have any.
They were the stuff of nightmares.
I struggled as I heard Trevor and Adrian and the other kid sing the spell of sacrifice. I knew I was next, that I was feeling the same horror and futility the other sacrificed shifters must have felt. I did not want to know how it felt to be eaten alive by ShadowEaters.
If they took me out, as Wyvern of the Pyr, I feared the rest of the dragon shifters would lose heart. My dad would be easy to trap then, in his grief, and he’s the leader of our kind. I feared that all the dragon shifters would seek revenge, only to follow me and my dad to oblivion.
Because I’d been too cocky.
Big mistake.
I knew there was nothing I could do, but I still fought. I watched the mesh of spell light grow brighter and denser. Kohana’s form was like a shadow falling over the spell light. He held the NightBlade high and called the invocation, the same invocation that the Mages had sung in the fall.
It was obscene hearing that song fall from his lips, to see that spell wind out of his mouth to join the others.
I couldn’t believe he would do it, but my eyes told me the truth. I saw the curved blade of the knife rise high. I saw its darkness silhouetted against the vivid light of the spell. I saw the ShadowEaters become frenzied. I saw the sphere get thinner in preparation for shattering. I felt Adrian and Trevor tremble in anticipation.
I struggled all the while, but I knew I was doomed.
“Now!” Kohana shouted. He leapt down toward me, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
But he sliced down the length of me with one savage stroke, severing the spells that bound me helpless. I sprang to my feet as he pivoted and sliced at Adrian, hacking off a big chunk of his shadow. Adrian screamed. The ShadowEaters sighed with lust and moved in new frenzy, licking and slurping and gobbling as they pushed at the spell that held them captive. The orb shimmered but held.
Just.
Trevor shouted in terror and tried to help Adrian, who had fallen to his knees.
I ran.
I heard footsteps behind me, and looked back to find Kohana closing fast, the NightBlade high in his hand. “You!” I shouted, once again unable to guess his allegiances. He’d lied to me and deceived me and helped me, and I never knew what to expect.
“Me!” he agreed, laughing.
I heard Trevor and the other kid singing and glanced back to see a spell being mustered.
It was shaped like a spear.
“Look out!” I shouted.
Kohana lunged past me and sliced at the air. I saw a golden barrier before us part in a shower of sparks. As if he had cut a hole in the side of a balloon, the glamour that had disguised us from the world fell like sliced cloth.
Then the NightBlade did a strange thing. It wriggled in Kohana’s grip, as if it had come alive, as if it were an eel or a snake. As if it were trying to work itself free.
Kohana swore and snatched at it with his other hand, but it sliced at him.
He yelled, and it jumped from his grip, catapulting through the air toward Adrian and Trevor.
“Holy shit,” Kohana said. “It’s got a will of its own.”
Trevor and the third kid stopped singing immediately and the spell they’d been conjuring fell to the ground, lifeless. They snatched at the NightBlade in unison, bumping into each other. The handle of the knife bounced off Trevor’s head, rebounded—or leapt of its own accord—
And sliced open the orb that held the ShadowEaters captive.
They surged through the space, gleeful and frenzied.
Free.
“They called to it,” Kohana said, his features ashen, and I knew he was right. The ShadowEaters spilled through the opening in the globe, milling on the ground, a great crowd of ravenous demons.
“How can we stop them?” I asked, but I knew the answer.
We couldn’t. Not now, not when they were hungry and fervid.
As I watched in horror, Adrian got to his feet. He snatched the NightBlade out of the air, seized the new kid, and muttered an invocation. “Blood and shadow!” he cried, and slit his throat.
The kid gurgled. Blood spurted from his throat. Adrian laughed and shimmered.
Then, before our eyes, Adrian became a ShadowEater himself. His features melted into shadow, and he turned into a silhouette, one filled with spell light. He hooted, and it was only by his position that I could tell which one of the ShadowEaters he was.
I was so stunned that I could have been rooted to the
ground. This was an initiation rite. And Adrian had passed. Was this where all of these ShadowEaters had come from? Had they once been humans? Mages?
Kohana seized my hand and hauled me through the shattered glamour. I couldn’t help looking back at the ShadowEaters. I had wanted my dream to be wrong. I wanted them to be benign, or easily defeated, or genies who happily went back into their respective jar.
No luck. They fell on the third kid, just like they had in my dream, surrounding him and overwhelming him. He tried to run, despite the wound on his throat. There was nothing anyone could do to save him, and nothing could have stopped their feasting. I shuddered as he fell, buried beneath them.
There was something deeply wrong with the sight of the ShadowEaters. They were shaped like humans but insubstantial. Their human forms had no real faces. Just those golden eyes and forms that couldn’t be distinguished one from another. They were all the same, interchangeable, all exuding menace.
And hunger.
Were they the next step in Mage evolution?
What came after that?
“Hurry up!” Kohana cried, and it was probably the first time I’d heard fear in his voice.
That was when I saw that Trevor had the NightBlade and was looking at us.
We raced forward together, and when Kohana yelled, “Now!” I knew what he meant.
I hoped like hell I could do it.
We both shifted shape as soon as we were through the space. I was so relieved that my shimmer was back that I was trembling. Kohana was holding one of my claws tightly, as if he would have hauled me into the sky with force, regardless of whether I’d been able to shift or not.
I roared at the welcome power of my shift. That barrier was gone. I delighted in the unfurling of my wings and the majestic power of my tail. I pivoted, not twenty feet above the ground, and exhaled fire at the collapsing shell of the Mage glamour.
I had nearly died.
I would have died, without Kohana’s help.
Just like that third kid, who was lifeless on the ground now, his blood staining the snow.
As we soared into the sky, the ShadowEaters retreated from his body. They were sated temporarily. They looked upward, all those golden eyes shining as they focused on us hovering overheard. I saw them leap into the air and didn’t need any encouragement from Kohana to boot it out of there.
He took off like a shot, flying with terrifying speed in the opposite direction.
I was right on his tail.
I saw the ShadowEaters leap into the sky behind us and knew we wouldn’t outrace them. They could fly through the air, too—I’d seen them do it in my dream.
There was only one way to save us. I tightened my grip on Kohana’s claw, closed my eyes, and flung us both through space and time.
WE WERE INSTANTLY OVER A park beside the lake, one I recognized as being close to my school. Lake Michigan was choppy and pewter in color, and the snow was still falling lazily. There was about a foot of snow in the park.
And I was a white salamander clutched in Kohana’s talons. It was one of two forms I could take as the Wyvern.
“Thanks,” he said, exhaling as he ensured that his grip on me was firm but not too tight. (Newts squish.) He circled, choosing a spot in the middle of an open area, then landed with care. He shifted shape in the last instant, touching the earth in his human form, tossing my salamander self into the air.
His expression was expectant and I knew what to do. I shifted shape and landed beside him in human form, then took a deep steadying breath.
“That was close,” he said, then flashed me a devilish grin.
His eyes glinted like jet, like he had a million secrets, and I wondered whether he really was about the same age as me or whether that was an illusion of some kind.
I looked at him, uncertain what to expect.
The thing was, I wasn’t sure whether Kohana had saved me for good or just for now.
I certainly wasn’t sure he’d tell me either way.
“Perfect, untouched snow in every direction,” he said, surveying the field with satisfaction. “We walk away from here, and the next person who comes along and sees the tracks will wonder where the walkers came from.”
I watched him smile. “You like messing with people’s perceptions.”
“I like giving others something to think about.” He gave me a hard look. “I guess we’ll call it square, Unktehila.” With that, he walked away.
“Square?” I said, astonished. “You just freed the ShadowEaters!”
“I did not.” He cast the words over his shoulder, not pausing or turning back.
“You brought the NightBlade back to them.”
He pivoted and flung out his hands, raising his voice for the first time. “Maybe it brought itself back to them.”
“But it’s supposed to be on the other side of the continent. In your safekeeping.”
“Oops.” Kohana turned to walk away again.
I raced behind him, catching up in about twenty feet. (It’s possible that this was because he let me catch up. I’m tall, but he’s taller.) “Why didn’t you just destroy the NightBlade when you had it?”
Kohana cast me a look. “Who says I didn’t try?”
I remembered that wriggling and had nothing to say.
Kohana’s eyes became impossibly darker. “The problem is that it’s not easily shattered.”
“King said that after you left with it,” I remembered.
“I shouldn’t have been surprised that it has a will of its own. That explains a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t know for sure until just now. But at home, it started to turn our elders against each other. I thought maybe I was seeing things that weren’t there, but the disputes escalated and—” He frowned and fell silent.
“What?”
His lips tightened. “On the equinox, one elder was found dead.”
I was shocked. “The NightBlade killed him?”
“No. It persuaded one of our own to wield it as a weapon.”
“How could it do that?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I saw it. Things got so ugly so fast. They were arguing about who should be custodian of the NightBlade. You should have heard the things people were saying to each other—no. No one should hear that.”
I thought of the effect of the Mage spells on the dragon guys when we’d been at boot camp and Adrian had been messing with our thoughts. Even though I knew they hadn’t meant what they’d said while under the influence of the spell, those words were hard to forget. “I’ve heard it,” I said.
“I’d never seen such dissent among our kind, and when that elder was found dead, my grandfather and I both knew what had caused it. He hadn’t liked my bringing it there, not from the start. I promised my grandfather that I would take the NightBlade away and not return until it was destroyed forever.”
“You’re an exile.”
He nodded once. “A willing one. This weapon has to be smashed down to molecules.” He spoke with such severity that I shivered.
“What were you even doing with Trevor and Adrian?”
Kohana frowned. “I can’t break the NightBlade. I can’t even scratch it. It seemed to me that the ones who made it would be the most likely to know how to destroy it.”
“Maybe it made you think that.”
His eyes glinted. “Maybe.”
“Did you lie to them?”
His smile flashed, so irreverent that I couldn’t help but smile in return. “Wouldn’t you?”
“In a heartbeat.”
He studied me, and his smile faded once more. “They didn’t believe me any more than you do,” he said quietly. “They said I had to prove that I wanted to join them, that I had to participate in the ceremony to prove my intent.”
“You had the NightBlade,” I pointed out. “You had to know what would be part of the ceremony.”
“Eliminate a shifter, preferably a wildcard. Yes, I knew.??
? He nodded, his expression hardening. “I would have done it, too, because it might have given me the secret to destroy that weapon forever.” His gaze locked with mine, his intensity making my mouth go dry. “If it had been any shifter but you, Zoë.”
Before I could wrap my mind around that—not just what he’d said but that he’d called me by my name—Kohana bent and swiftly touched his lips to mine. His kiss burned against my mouth, even with the contact being as short as it was.
He looked deep into my eyes and spoke softly. “Remember, Unktehila, they get their power from eating shadows, and they like shifter shadows best.”
Then he walked away, leaving me standing alone in the snow.
Astonished.
And shaken.
Which had nothing on my reaction when I saw the wolf watching us from the shrubbery that surrounded the clearing. The wolf was silvery gray and utterly still, unblinking, its expression that of a predator.
Derek.
Before I could do anything, the wolf disappeared into the undergrowth as surely as a shadow fades from view. Kohana, meanwhile, had also vanished.
I was alone in the middle of a snowy field.
Good. I glanced at the time on my messenger and took a deep breath. Excellent. I had English in ten minutes. A little spontaneous manifestation—arriving in one of the school restrooms—and I just might make it.
Derek was in my English class, but it would take me a bit longer than the trip over to figure out what to say to him about what he’d seen.
I MADE IT TO MY locker, hyperventilating and desperately in need of a sugar hit (with no time to get any), only to find a note taped to it.
It seemed I had an appointment in guidance counseling.
And I was late.
Fantabulous.
The day just kept getting better.
The counselor, Muriel, was on the phone, so I took the seat outside her office and peeled off my coat. I checked my messenger and found roughly forty-five thousand anxious messages from Meagan, including the update that Jessica still wasn’t answering her messenger. She hadn’t turned up at school, either. I quickly let Meagan know where I was, my concern for Jessica growing by the second. She was the one, after all, who had nearly been sacrificed to the ShadowEaters in the fall. That might make her more vulnerable.