Shadow Hunt

CHAPTER 2



Armored with purpose, Ellie entered the stone gate building of Martin House, an overnight satchel in hand, cold rage in her heart. After relinquishing the keys to Segue’s car, Cam followed with the hanging garment bag—they’d heard some Houses dressed for dinner. Ellie held her shadow firmly in check, deep within her body, and hoped no one would notice that she didn’t cast one.

Fury had made her thinking razor sharp. She’d decided that she was going to find Slight, and then, per the discussion in Adam’s office, hand him over to Cam for slaughter. If her shadow, her deepest self, was a danger to others, then that’s what she should do. Pride had no place in this. Neither did trust, but whatever. She would put Cam’s disloyalty aside. Her anger, however, was more difficult to overcome.

He doubted her.

Truth: her shadow had been violent in the past. It had also saved lives, including Cam’s, but yes, it had been violent. And choosing to kill versus needing to kill was a distinction that she acknowledged. All of this made sense. Which ticked her off some more, but that couldn’t be helped, now could it?

The interior of the gatehouse included closed doors off to the left and right, but a wide open space in the middle, with two empty tables where attendants waited to “process” them. Apparently, Martin House was a compound that included a small campus ominously called the Seminary of War. Said so, right there, in sharp, spare lettering. She had no doubt that the mage Slight was a graduate of its studies.

Ellie finally had her comeback argument, too late for the meeting with Adam and Cam: Her shadow, in a fight to the death, would win because her shadow was amazingly strong, fast, and couldn’t be hurt, couldn’t be killed. Cam, on the other hand, despite being a very smart man, and having all-seeing eyes, and having trained with Segue’s best for a year, was nevertheless made of flesh and blood. Truth: he could be killed.

Martin had a Seminary of War. Cam had a doctorate in astrophysical sciences and applied nerdology.

But fine. He would fight Slight if they could find him. And if Cam died, not just a friend, but the love of her life, then what the hell kind of chaos did he think her shadow would wreak? Riddle me that, doctor.

She hoped Slight was on the other side of the world, because if he was here, then this visit could only end badly for everyone.

“Ms. Russo?” A deferential older attendant addressed her. He had the narrow body of someone whose strength had long gone out of him, sparse strands of gray combed across his scalp. They’d been warned before coming that Gunnar Martin had strict security measures in place.

Ellie squared her shoulders as the attendant took her satchel, put it on a table, unzipped it, and proceeded to search her belongings. His gloved hands lifted her underwear and put it to the side so that he could delve deeper into the bag. He felt around the cups of her bra before setting it to the side as well. She supposed that this kind of search might make some uncomfortable, but her shadow walked around naked, occasionally touched herself when aroused, and was routinely lewd among strangers. Martin House could have at her underwear.

Cam was getting similar treatment at a table to her right, but he was also filling out a form to log his gun. Apparently, firearms were just fine. What the hell were they searching for then?

The luggage was passed over the tables, and the attendants began a search of their persons. Cam’s attendant found something in his pocket. A little black box. And put it on the table. What was . . . ?

Her heart thumped as the attendant flicked the lid open.

Ellie caught a glittering flash, then had to look away as a rush of emotion racked her body.

Cam had warned her that she might lose control, and he was right. But if she did, then it was entirely his fault.

What was he doing with that?

She looked back at him and bored her gaze into his profile, but he would not turn his head.

Look at me!

Her attendant stepped back from patting her down. “Do you wield Shadow?”

The black box went back into Cam’s pants pocket.

“No,” Ellie said in a strangled voice. She had a shadow, but it wasn’t made of the magic stuff. Actually, she didn’t know what it was made of—a bit of her soul, perhaps—which was the opposite of what the attendant meant. “No,” she said again.

Cam had a ring, and she guessed it had to be for her. If she let her shadow go right now, her dark self would dive for Cam’s pants, which was not the way she wanted to meet Gunnar Martin or his murdering lackey Slight.

“Very good,” the attendant finished. “If you will just pass through these doors, you will find another car waiting to take you through the wards and up to the main house. Enjoy your stay at Martin House.”

Cam had obviously chosen to ignore that the attendant had exposed the ring. He was coolly explaining that only his eyes were touched with Shadow, augmenting his vision, and that the rest of him was human. The explanation didn’t move his attendant until Cam went into the story of how his eyes had gotten that way, at which point, a call was made.

The attendants waited silently for the reply.

Ellie looked to Cam, at a loss about so many things and yet on the brink of such danger. A murder. Talion. Martin House. The Dark Age. And now a diamond ring. Ummmm?

Cam shrugged, finally brought his black gaze over. “My grandmother’s. I had it sized to fit you months ago. Been imagining you showing it off, you know, like girls do when they’re happy.”

She shook from the inside out. “You get that this is not the time, right?”

“Yeah, well, tell me a better one,” he argued back, right there in front of the attendants of the enemy. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like this, though.”

What was he thinking bringing that thing along? He’d gone insane. They had work to do. Dire, ugly work.

Cam’s attendant was back with his answer. “Your altered eyes have been approved.” The attendant turned to Ellie. “If you are the woman who was accompanying Dr. Kalamos when his vision was altered, then we’re told you do possess Shadow. Please declare it now.”

Ellie shook her head. “I don’t have a drop of Shadow inside me.” She was tempted to mention Brand’s name just to get them through, but didn’t want to spend that currency before even getting inside the main building.

Cam stepped to her side. “She doesn’t have Shadow. If she did, my touched eyes would see it.”

The attendant bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry. We have other information.”

Slight-gathered information, no doubt. How else could Martin House know?

Ellie kept herself still, but she was squirming inside. “I have a shadow, but not Shadow, as in magic.” But they weren’t going to buy it. No one did without seeing her shadow for themselves.

“Ma’am, surely you understand that with tensions as they are in these dark times, we cannot let you pass without declaring.”

She sighed in exasperation. Sooner or later her shadow was going to make an appearance anyway.

“Fine,” Ellie said. “But I really don’t know what she’ll do right now.”

Go after Martin or Slight? Dive into Cam’s pants? Or worse? This never got any easier.

Ellie let herself go, and her shadow stepped out of alignment, bare breasts leading. The intensity of Ellie’s anger diminished, her mind becoming clearer.

The two attendants’ expressions remained remarkably controlled. But then Slight could be invisible, so maybe a naked shadow wasn’t that big a deal.

Her shadow climbed up on the table, knees open, crouching to pounce like a feral cat.

Her deepest self was interested in the attendants, even trumping Cam’s ring. Interesting.

A flush of mortification heated her face. Her shadow never felt shame. But she’d had more than a year to get used to this. So she was naked, so what? At least her shadow had decent tone and a fairly nice rack.

Cam, of course, knew what she was really feeling. “You don’t see what I see.”

She saw the naked woman with the parted legs just fine.

Hurt, Ellie looked over at Cam, but found him looking right back at her, the part of her in the flesh who was all mixed up and forever would be. He always knew right where she was, the part that counted.

Damn it. Her mouth started to shape the word yes. Yes to everything—the ring and whatever else he had planned. She was defenseless against Cam’s ruined black eyes.

But a shot was fired.

In a blur of swift darkness, Ellie found her shadow fully opaque and straddling the older attendant’s neck—though he didn’t quite look like an old man now. In fact, he appeared wiry, agile, ageless. His pinned outstretched arm and hand held a gun. He must have drawn and pulled the trigger very quickly.

Her shadow leaned in to kill, her expression wild, but Ellie kept her dark self from committing murder. She’d come a long, long way since she’d first begged Segue for help. Why couldn’t they see that?

Cam pressed his hand into her back. A signal.

She glanced over to see why and found the other attendant growing in size and muscle, bouldering himself up to near seven feet and rounding out like a mountain. His clothing accommodated his transformation. A club had appeared in his hand, and as he grew, he brought the club up to strike at her shadow.

The club licked downward, aiming for her shadow’s head. Her dark self kept one hand on the attendant at her crotch and caught hold of the club with the other, bringing the second attendant booming down to the floor with what had to be herculean strength condensed into a dark female form.

Cam cleared his throat and said, “You will note that Ms. Russo’s shadow is not made from, nor does it wield, Shadow.”

Soul, Ellie thought.

Ellie forced her shadow to merely put a foot on the other attendant’s neck, not snap it. But it was hard to keep herself in check. The deep part of herself relished the way the two attendants’ faces turned purple and wanted the satisfaction of the crack of bone.

Most people got to smooth over the raw aspects of themselves; hers were frequently on display. Deep down, this was who she was. Maybe Cam was right about how dangerous she was after all. And he wanted to put a ring on her finger? She was living a nightmare.

The attendants both heaved for breath.

“Although,” Cam continued, “the event that split Ms. Russo into her physical and shadow selves might have had something to do with magic, but we can’t know for sure. Are you satisfied?”

“No hard feelings,” Ellie said, to make it easier. “Mr. Slight couldn’t beat my shadow either.”

A moment of silence, then . . .

“I yield,” said the first.

“I yield,” echoed the second.

Good enough, and better, the attendants’ submission felt right for Segue’s arrival at a place that housed a Seminary of War, as if they’d passed a test. Ellie brought her snarling and snapping shadow back with a hard tug that returned her to her perch on the table. “Cam,” Ellie said, “I’m told a car is waiting outside to take us through the wards and up to the main house.”

“Excellent.” He shouldered the garment bag and took her satchel with his free hand. “After you.”





Cam followed Ellie toward the waiting car, but he kept himself alert and ready. Her shadow was good in all sorts of situations, but it had its limitations. It could always deter direct hostility. Always. Puzzles, however, eluded its instinct and put Ellie on the same playing field as everyone else. And that’s when they would have to depend upon his eyes, his sight, and Segue’s training.

Was Martin’s car going to take them to the house after Ellie’s display? Cam guessed the next few minutes would answer his question.

A narrow driveway threaded around the back of the gatehouse. High walls made from pruned bushes blocked the view. A black SUV waited.

Ellie lifted her hand in a casual gesture that only Cam knew was unnecessary. He glanced over his shoulder to find the shadow leaping through the air, phasing momentarily through the wall of the gatehouse, phasing through him as well, as it rushed back into union with Ellie’s body. He tried not to grin and spoil Ellie’s swagger, but God, what a woman.

She satisfied his restless mind, awed him with her courage, and made him blood-drumming hard all at the same time.

Bringing the ring had been a last-minute impulse. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, none of this, so he’d snatched up the ring in case there’d be a moment when he could choose—no, seize—the destiny he wanted, a forever with Ellie. Every goddamn time they’d gotten close, some nightmare had ruined their chance at happiness and peace. He didn’t have the patience to wait anymore.

He opened the back of the SUV and loaded their bags. Ellie was already seated inside the car when he climbed in the other side.

She carried herself differently now than she had when she first started working with Segue, as if she had a sense—albeit a tentative one—of how amazing she was and what she contributed. And yet she was the same too—the girl whose parents had run out on her when they couldn’t cope with her shadow. Ellie’s care had been left to her grandmother, for whom Cam would be forever grateful. Gran, and Gran alone, had stood by Ellie when her shadow was wild, unrestrainable, potentially homicidal. Gran had kept Ellie safe and loved. She’d passed away when Ellie was still a teen, and that’s when the real trouble began.

The SUV eased along the drive, farther inside the compound, so Cam guessed they were to be welcomed after all. Maybe the guards just wanted to know what Segue was capable of. He hoped they were getting the picture. Mess with us at your peril.

The tall hedges broke with a turn of the SUV onto a long drive, and Cam sat up to take in as much as he could, and with any luck spot a certain Slight someone.

The mage’s compound was a revelation. Cam had witnessed the misty roll of Shadow before within Segue. And he attempted to touch the stringier, webbier strands that collected in Segue’s darkest corners, though they had always eluded his reach. But what he saw within the compound that constituted Martin House made him acknowledge that indeed a new age on Earth had begun.

Rolling lawns blanketed the rise and ridge before him, like the parks that often surrounded aristocratic homes in Europe. At the summit of the landscape was a very large, stately home, overlooking the land below. Anyone, any human that was, might see power, prestige, and wealth. Cam’s vision, however, was superhuman: Overlaid upon the mundane view of the mortal world, he saw the wild, craggy trees of Twilight, bowed with the weight and menace of eons of magic. He witnessed the fleeting scatter and dodge of the fae within, playing tricks already. He recognized the infinite resource from which Martin and any mage House could draw.

Shadow was upon the world. A Dark Age. And today he and Ellie were humanity’s emissaries.

Everything was changing, each moment more dangerous. That knowledge made him desperate to hold and protect the woman he loved. How could he convince her that his heart was just as bound to her as her shadow and always would be?

Color blasted his sight, and a queer sensation burned through his brain, informing him of the moment the SUV had crossed the wards, the barrier of protection that surrounded the greatest of the mage Houses. But the soul-rending, mind-fogging scent of Twilight was absent. Nor did he feel the throb of the fateful trees. His vision alone was affected—no, dazzled. This was the closest to “crossing” that he’d ever come.

He and Ellie were let out at the grand front steps, while the car continued around back with their luggage.

He took Ellie’s elbow to keep her close as the massive double front doors to Martin House were thrown open like a mouth about to swallow them whole. Shadows lurked within like dark spirits of those who’d gone before. Bad sign. They entered a grand foyer that bisected the house. At the far end, a bank of windows had the luminous greenish hue of foliage beyond.

“Mr. Martin will see you in the courtyard,” another attendant said. He had a slender build and showed signs of age around the eyes, but considering the men in the gatehouse, Cam was sure the attendant could hold his own.

Cam took a sec to look carefully around. No Slight yet. He made brief eye contact with Ellie—her shock at the ring had been tucked inside her. He’d try to explain himself later, beg if necessary. Pride was overrated and cost too much.

“Thank you.” Cam paced his longer stride to match Ellie’s. Together they walked through the foyer and exited into the green. Lush, dark vines defied the season, climbing pillars and brambling along the ground in profusion.

Near a silver-spilling fountain stood a very tall man, at least seven feet to Cam’s six-two, and a young blond woman, in her early twenties. The man had shoulder lines of muscle, and the eased stance of someone comfortable in his skin. He seemed youthful, but gray threaded through his brown hair at his temples. He turned his mage-black eyes upon their approach, and Cam got the impression of violence held in a still cup.

“Ah. The humans from Segue have arrived,” said the tall man, as if amused.

“Human” wasn’t an insult to Cam. “And you are greatmage Gunnar Martin?”

Cam tried to keep his attention on the mage, but noticed movement beyond, among the Shadowy trees of Twilight. Cam had heard about the fae encroaching on the world, but he had not taken the warning quite so literally. But then there was much more Shadow within these wards than there was at Segue. How close were the fae, really? It was a frightening question.

“I am Martin,” the tall man answered, identifying himself as the head of the House, thus Gunnar. “I was surprised that the famous Adam Thorne sent you, and did not come himself, his half-fae witchwife with him. Now, she would’ve been interesting.”

Witchwife? Try banshee. But Cam wasn’t going to quibble. “I look forward to the day when Martin and Segue can become allies, at which time, I’m sure you will meet Adam and Talia. In the meantime, I am Dr. Cameron Kalamos and this is my colleague, Specialist Eleanor Russo.” Cam used the introduction as an excuse to look at Ellie.

She appeared calm, but her eyelids were at half-mast, which meant she was holding her shadow in check. She was looking at the young woman to Martin’s side—pretty, young, fit—but not threatening. Which meant lethal.

“This is my daughter, Mathilde,” Martin said. “She’s a kind of specialist, too, and teaches at the Seminary.”

Ellie’s expression was sharp, hard stone.

Slender movement in the forest had Cam’s attention flicking over, just behind Gunnar. Something or someone seemed to draw closer.

Ellie finally spoke, but there was no veneer of friendliness to her tone. “What exactly do you specialize in?”

Cam watched the trees. There. Whoever it was had a familiar height and slow, creeping stealth. Had to be Slight. Draw and fire? End this now? What nerve to skulk around just as they arrived.

The lady mage, Mathilde, smiled. “I specialize in recruiting humanity and managing the tasks I set for them. A liaison, if you will.”

Cam glanced at Mathilde—he didn’t like a word of what she said or her condescension. “You’ve worked with humans?”

She smiled again, so brightly. “I have, yes. I have a great respect for what your kind can and will do for mine.”

The woman was baiting him for a reaction. Cam wanted to deny that humanity would cooperate with magekind at all, but this was also an information-gathering mission. “Can do for you in what capacity?”

“Oh, any number of things.” Mathilde lifted a hand toward Ellie, and Cam could see a trail of shadow that smoked in the air.

Cam put an arm out to nudge Ellie back. Mathilde would not touch her.

The stalker in the trees glimmered, then seemed to split into three advancing figures. Only one was real, but Cam didn’t have the luxury of concentrating on them at the moment to discern which of them he should worry about.

“Let me see you,” Mathilde urged Ellie. She used a golden, hypnotic voice.

“No,” Ellie said.

But her shadow writhed outward from her body and trembled in the air, half phased with Ellie’s flesh, half sparkling in amazing beauty—breast, shoulder, chin, cheekbone.

The only other person Cam had ever seen control Ellie’s shadow was an angel named Laurence, and he’d asked permission first.

“Stop it.” Fury reddened Cam’s vision.

Slight—all three of him—stepped into clear, unobstructed view and made a pitying face at Cam. Cam was almost certain that the one on the left was the real man.

That bastard could wait.

Mathilde, on the other hand, was going to die at the first opportunity. How dare she assault Ellie like that. Martin was toying with them.

Ellie, coolheaded now that she was separated from her shadow, reached up and squeezed his arm to wait—not the time; wait and see—while the deeper part of herself was snared by the mage.

Cam didn’t have the luxury of separated emotion. It took all of his control not to strike out, though he knew in the back of his mind that this was a game, posturing for dominance. Martin would humor greatmage Kaye Brand’s request to entertain Segue at his House, but that was it. This House would never treat humans as equals.

Mathilde winked at Cam, shot a glance at her father, much like a Yes, I can handle her just fine, and then released Ellie.

“A common use,” Mathilde said, “of your kind is for grunts to do our bidding, our cleaning, and even our fighting, if necessary. It won’t be long now.”

Ellie shivered violently beside Cam, now feeling the impact of the assault. But Mathilde might be able to do worse than she already had. For the moment, they had to bide their time and learn what they could. Still . . .

“You will find humanity is stronger than you could possibly imagine,” Cam said. These mages didn’t know whom they were dealing with.

Gunnar inclined his head in good humor. “You sound like Brand. But that’s only because she spent too much time among you when she was a stray. She’ll learn. She likes her power. She won’t give it away when she can take so easily.”

“And just think, Dr. Kalamos,” Mathilde put in, “with your Shadow-tuned eyes, you’ll be able to see everything as it unfolds.”

Cam could see the dark wood of Twilight all around and within the house. He’d witnessed a leap of color when he crossed the wards, which kept Shadow inside and concentrated it within the sphere of the House. It was a preview of the future, the Dark Age; the collision of the Other and the mundane on the same plane of existence.

War was coming, and if he wasn’t very, very smart, he and Ellie would be among its first casualties.

He glanced at Slight again. Dark brown hair, black eyes, pale, thin, deadly. He had a livid gash up his throat and across his jaw. Looked like a knife wound. Go, Marcie. A little to the left, and she’d have hit his jugular.

If an untrained human cook could do that, Cam could and would do worse.