You are not powerful enough to save your friend, your lover, or yourself. Surrender to me, little Nora, and I will spare your friends. Offer yourself to me willingly and they will be safe.
Nora shook her head. She had seen inside of Damastes and knew better. He’d hunt them down and make them suffer to satisfy his petty need for revenge over whatever indignities he believed Nora had caused. More than that, she sensed he was still hiding something, some secret that he was holding close to his wretched heart, waiting to use against her when the time was right.
Indigo shook her head.
How had Rafe done it? Or had he done it at all? She traveled through shadows all the time, moved from place to place as if there were no distance in between. It had always been short distances, mostly to places she had already been or at least seen, but if Damastes had somehow dragged her to his home, she knew one thing—he had done it through the shadows. And if that was true, then she could surely find her way back.
All she required was a path.
She commanded the shadows and they obeyed. The light failed to fall in one corner, and as she stared, a patch of darkness grew there, deepening into a black, inky maelstrom that pulled at her. There, her pathway home.
Damastes seemed to fight her, but only for a moment before he stopped struggling. Nora thought it might be a bluff, a lie to make her think she was winning. Still, there was no choice. Sam needed her. Shelby needed her. And she needed the both of them.
Inside her, Damastes laughed. Go where you like, girl. Fight as long as you can. In the end, I will have my freedom. Before that day comes, I will make the ones you love suffer. I will feed on them as I fed on the souls of your—
Indigo shoved aside his voice and leaped into the darkness. The maelstrom longed for her, welcomed her, swallowed her. The shadows swaddled her and she heard the familiar whispers of the endless void, sounds and voices she would never be able to interpret. For a moment, memories seemed to flicker at the edges of her mind, but they meant nothing to her now. Only one thing mattered at that moment. She had to get to Sam and Shelby before it was too late. She had to.
Without them she had no reasons she could think of to live, save for revenge.
9
Revenge.
What was the phrase? Revenge is a dish best served cold?
Nora didn’t know who said it. She remembered it from a Klingon warlord in one of the Star Trek movies, but she thought it was older than that. Maybe a French writer, maybe Shakespeare. Maybe Genghis Khan for all she knew. And what did it matter? It was wrong. Revenge, she knew, should be hot. As hot as blood. As hot as the rage that flared inside her heart.
Hot enough to burn that evil bastard Damastes out of her soul.
As Indigo she came out of the shadows, staggered, reached for a wall—any wall, anything sturdy and upright and real—and leaned against it. Her knees buckled and she sagged drunkenly against the cold stone. She placed her forehead against it. Nora’s forehead, not Indigo’s.
The tears that seared her cheeks, though … did they belong to her or her shadow self? What was the difference now? Who was she after all?
A betrayed child of human monsters?
A slave to a demon?
A woman whose entire life was a lie?
Where was Nora in all of that? Who was Nora?
And what was Indigo? How much of her was hers, and how much was the demon who moved within her like a virus, infecting her, controlling her, feeding off the things she did?
Too many questions.
Too many.
Nora wept against the cold stone, not knowing or caring where she was.
Unsure if she wanted to know who she was.
And dreadfully afraid of what she was.
*
The voice said, “Are you all right?”
But those were not the actual words. It took Nora’s numbed mind a moment to realize that the question had been asked in Italian.
“Stai bene?”
Those were the words she’d heard … but she’d understood them in English. She raised her head and looked at the figure standing a few feet away. It was a nun. Ancient, her face a labyrinth of deep wrinkles, mouth thin and trembling, nose bulbous and a bit crooked. But her eyes were strangely young. They were bright green, like cat’s eyes, with no trace of glaucoma, no rheumy redness to the sclera.
Nora licked her lips. “I don’t understand,” she told the nun.
But her mouth said, “Non capisco.”
The nun smiled. A thin smile, oddly knowing. “Da dove vieni?”
“Where am I from?” Nora looked around. The wall against which she’d been leaning was a massive structure, broad though only a few stories high, made from massive rough brown stones. A sloping grade of stony concrete swept down to a narrow, crooked cobblestoned street. A handful of people sat at sidewalk tables, drinking tiny cups of coffee and eating croissants. The sign on the wall of the little restaurant read CAFFè DELLA GALLERIA. “Where the hell am I?”
“Dove credi di essere?” Where do you think you are?
Nora said, more as a question than a statement, “Italy…?”
The nun shook her head. “Firenze.”
Nora blinked in surprise. “Florence? How—?”
She stopped, unwilling to have that conversation with a stranger. She knew how. Shadows. The real question was “Why?” or … “Why here?”
She had no connection with Italy beyond a love of pizza, cannoli, and a good Chianti.
Continuing to speak in Italian, the nun took a tentative step closer. “Are you lost, my child?”
Nora began to turn away, to wave her off, a denial forming on her lips, wanting to end this conversation so she could find another doorway into shadow and get the hell out of here. Instead, she stopped and her mind replayed the question.
Something was wrong.
Her confused mind had heard the nun ask if she was okay. A kind question, spoken with compassion by a woman whose job description required compassion. But then the actual words came through the fog in Nora’s mind. The nun hadn’t asked a question at all. No. She had made a statement. Two words.
“Sei perso.” Nora turned back to the nun. “You are lost.”
That was what the old woman had said.
And she hadn’t said it nicely.
“Wh-what did you say?”
“You are lost. So lost.”
“What do you mean? You don’t even know who I am.”
“I know.”
“Prove it.”
The smile on the old nun’s face widened, revealing yellow teeth that were wet with spit. “I know you, Nora Hesper, born of shadows, fattened on lies, blood traitor, daughter of fools, slave and whore of the Butcher.”
Each word struck Nora like a physical blow, pummeling her, driving her back step by step until she sagged gasping against the wall.
“Who are you?”
Instead of answering the nun spat on the ground at Nora’s feet. The spittle glistened on the stone and then began to sizzle like fat on a griddle. Nora yelped and scuttled sideways.