“Hang tight, we’re there,” the driver said, slowing to a stop in front of the white sweep of Segue’s main entrance.
Shadowman fought the door to get it open, ended up smacking it with his forearm to blow the thing clear off the vehicle. He cast his gaze around the edifice seeking Shadow, and finding none, he tripped going up the stairs for his lack of care. As far as he could see, the only Shadows on the building were the pale, stretched blotches of the coming break of day.
The door burst open and Adam jogged down to greet him. Shadowman watched Adam’s gaze travel the length of his new human body. His expression was stressed with concern.
“It’s true, then. You’re mortal.”
“Where’s Layla?” Shadowman scarcely knew his own voice. Everything an effort, the littlest combination of breath and throat and tongue delayed his finding her.
“I’m so sorry,” Adam said. If Adam felt sorry, Shadowman couldn’t sense it, and so the claim felt empty. “When the Shadow came over Segue, she went to help Zoe with Abigail.”
The heat of anger that rolled over Shadowman’s skin made him sway. “You said you’d protect her.”
“I had to get Talia and the children out,” Adam explained. “Layla said you’d come for her. How could I have known you’d become mortal? I didn’t even know such a thing was possible.”
Shadowman pushed Adam aside and continued up the stairs. The boy was useless. “Where is my daughter? Where is Talia?”
“She’s in an outbuilding. This place is too dangerous for her.”
“Get her, then. And you watch the children.”
“Don’t talk to him that way,” Talia said from above them, a babe on each hip. She looked to her husband, shrugging. “I came in the back. I think the worst is over.”
“Be still your tongue!” If the worst were over, then Layla was lost. And the bitter, bitter irony was he’d do anything right now to grip his scythe. To hear its keen and answer it with a roar of his own. He’d bear the endless millennia as Death to see her safely through Shadow to the gates of Heaven. Becoming the Reaper again would be such a small price to pay to preserve her spirit. He should have listened to her when he had the chance. Now they were both lost.
Talia pressed her lips together for a moment. “What do you need?”
Shadowman reached the top of the stairs. “I need a wraith and then I need you to scream like you have never screamed before.”
They congregated again below the earth in the prison Adam had dedicated to the wraiths, where Death had revealed himself to Layla, and she had known the purpose to her second life on Earth. The angels they left aboveground, so as not to compete with Talia’s call to Shadow. Talia’s children were below as well, in a stroller for convenience. That Talia and Adam would permit them in this stinking grave spoke of their own concern for Layla. If this didn’t work . . . If he couldn’t cross . . .
At least, for all the devil’s games, she had not set the wraiths free.
Two guards and some sort of mechanical arm conveyed a wraith to a movable slab. Binding metal bands restrained each of its limbs and a doubled cage crossed its torso. The creature writhed until blood dripped down the silver, so it must have known its death was coming.
“Scream,” commanded Shadowman, looking over at his daughter.
He could tell Talia’s thoughts were turned inward, focused on Layla no doubt, and summoning the required intensity of feeling for the task before her. Please, child, draw deep. She took a long breath and then shredded the veil with a shriek, a command, a misery, her arms lifting to her sides, fingers splayed with effort. The sound was a wail of her own pain, a lifetime of loss in the making, a hope found, then demolished. The feeling battered the room with its intensity and set the wraith shrieking with her.
And indeed, darkness swirled in a vortex of magic, a storm of great reckoning to call upon Death. The sound shook his mortal body, atom upon atom quailing, which didn’t bode well.
Shadowman dived into the terrible center. Flung himself across the divide between the worlds. But only ended up a few paces from where he’d stood a moment before.
The wraith made muffled sounds of laughter, then cut off suddenly, its eyes wide with fear.
From the depths, the moon scythe gleamed. And soon a figure emerged, a girl, Zoe. The sister to the great one. Her gaze now had the black depth of Shadow, her skin the queer shine of the fae. She gripped his weapon, and when she took in the scene, her face contorted.
“Oh, fuck no,” she said, eyeing Talia, whose scream ended abruptly. “Ain’t no way I’m coming when she calls.”
“Give me the scythe.” Shadowman held out his hand.