6
Nora’s rush of confusion and panic took her almost to the subway station before she managed to stop beneath a bodega awning and take a deep breath. It was as if a section of her memory had been snipped out. She’d been standing at Shelby’s apartment door, about to knock, and then it had been morning and she’d been working at her desk without any recollection of the events in between. She’d been blackout drunk at least once in her life, but an episode like that wouldn’t have impacted her ability to remember getting up in the morning, taking a shower and getting dressed, and commuting to work. Besides, she didn’t feel hungover. And she’d never heard of a drug that could cause such a memory lapse.
So what. The fuck. Was this?
Her heart hammered in her chest. Her skin prickled and she glanced around, wondering if anyone might have noticed how oddly she was behaving. Certainly her face must be flushed. Nora took a deep breath and pushed through the doorway into the bodega. She bought a bottled iced tea, conducting the transaction more to feel normal than anything else, then stepped back outside.
Home, she thought, uncapping the tea and taking a sip. Maybe she really did need sleep, but that felt too simple. Whatever had happened to her, it hadn’t been normal. She needed to be home, behind a locked door, safe. She needed to think. She also needed to call the office and make her excuses, then figure out a way to make everything right with Sam. It didn’t matter how worn-out or confused she felt, he was an important person in her life and she had to make it right.
As she started toward the subway station, she thought about the look on Sam’s face when she’d brushed him off just now, and guilt washed over her. Distracted, she took another sip of her iced tea and started down the dark, narrow steps into the subway station.
The moment she reached the landing, something moved just at the edge of her peripheral vision. Reflex alone saved her from a blow that would have crushed her trachea, if not outright killed her. She jerked back enough to take the worst of the impact on her shoulder, and her arm instantly went numb from the force. Her assailant charged forward with a flurry of devastating blows that she barely managed to block, each of them sending jolts through her arms.
Mugger? No. This was not random and Nora had nothing on her worth stealing. This had to be the cult. A Phonoi assassin. Nora felt a momentary panic, but then she reached out for the shadows and everything seemed better.
Alone in that subway stairwell, at least for a moment, Indigo turned toward her attacker, a woman in her early to mid forties, dressed in a simple black outfit, no jewelry to catch the light. No earrings or bangles to get caught on obstructions in the middle of a mêlée. She moved with regal grace and her face offered no emotions. This was a warrior, someone to respect. Maybe someone to fear.
The woman moved in a low circle and swept Indigo’s feet, knocking her on her ass before she knew what happened. She’d dealt with Phonoi assassins before, but never one this fast.
As the woman stepped closer, dark eyes assessing her, Indigo struck. The wave of shadow stuff caught the woman in the stomach and sent her staggering backward even as Indigo rose to her feet and drew the stairwell’s gloom in to cloak her.
“Bad choice, lady.”
“No choice.” The note of regret in that voice didn’t keep the woman from coming for Indigo like a cat stalking a mouse.
Indigo didn’t like the idea of being the mouse in that scenario and moved in hard and fast on her enemy. Shadows wrapped around her fists and she struck four rapid blows, each aimed at the woman’s rib cage.
None of them connected. The blocks were hard sweeps of hands and forearms that knocked the attacks aside, and before Indigo could recover, the older woman had struck her twice in her stomach. Neither blow was devastating, but they kept Indigo off-balance. The assassin slammed a knee into Indigo’s abdomen hard enough to make her stagger and cough as she wrapped shadow tendrils around the woman and hurled her against the wall, shattering the filthy tiles that made the subway steps look like the entrance to a public bathroom.
Indigo caught her breath as the shadows around her faltered. She started down the steps toward her enemy and tried to remember how to breathe past the pain. The assassin had slid down several steps, but now she sprang up again, hatred in her eyes.
“Did you think you could walk the earth and no one would know?” the woman sneered. “That no one would try to stop you?”
“Can you translate that babble for me?” Indigo’s body ached in ways she hadn’t known were possible, but not enough to distract her from the nonsense words of her attacker. Whatever she was talking about, the words didn’t sound like the usual Children of Phonos screed.
“When you fall into hell, tell them Selene sent you.”
Selene?
The woman ran up the steps, leaped onto the handrail, and launched a kick that forced Indigo to dodge, caused her to stumble, bought the assassin a precious moment of advantage. The first blow struck Indigo in the skull and had her wobbling. The second caught her just behind her ear and made her see lights.
The third she stopped with a coil of shadows. It was close. Indigo’s entire body was shaking. The darkness gathered her in comfort. Early afternoon in New York, but here in this rare private moment, no one had yet noticed two women trying to kill each other. That wouldn’t last. Any second now someone would come up or down these stairs and would find themselves in danger. Indigo couldn’t allow that. This had to end now.
She reached out a hand and forged a sword from the shadows. “I don’t know who you think you’re fighting, and I don’t know who sent you, but I think maybe you’re as confused as I am. You caught me off guard. Come at me again, and I will cut you in half.”
The assassin paused, brow knitted in confusion. She stared at Indigo as if searching for some deception, then Selene took a step backward.
“You’re not him,” she whispered, seemingly to herself.
“Hell, lady, do I look like a ‘him’?”
Selene took three steps down into the station. “What does this mean?” she said, glancing around at nothing. When she glanced up at Indigo again, her eyes glittered with dark intellect, as if she’d just experienced an epiphany that had enraged her.
“I suspect we’ll meet again,” Selene said. Then she turned and raced down the narrow stairs and vanished into the subway’s darkness.
Indigo watched her go. “Oh, I can’t wait.”