The Shadow Reader

He doesn’t. As soon as I crawl away, he chirps and follows me. Fortunately, the laundry room and breakfast nook share a wall, so I have my backpack in hand within seconds. Sosch darts into it before I return to my spot by the back door.

Naito watches me zip the bag. “The vigilantes probably wouldn’t find him.”

I shrug, then reopen the zipper a little, leaving Sosch enough room to breathe and get out if he wants.

“How much longer?” I ask, slipping the backpack on.

He doesn’t need to answer. My skin tingles an instant before a fissure opens just outside the laundry room.

“Now,” the fae says.

Naito pulls me to my feet. “Stay close.”

I don’t have time to worry about jostling Sosch. We burst from the inn’s back door and into the night. Or what’s supposed to be night. The clearing is lit with fissuring fae. The white slashes of light reflect off the pouring rain. It’s like running through a field of fireworks—the grand finale—on the Fourth of July. Gunfire accentuates the shrrip, shrrip, shrrips of the fae’s fissures as they leap in and out of this world, over and over again, faster than I can track.

“Keep moving!” Naito shouts.

My vision is blurred with light and smudged with shadows. I can barely see where I’m running, and I’m terrified I’m going to sprint straight through a fissure. Where’s the damn tree line? Rain pelts my eyes, and I swear the clearing lengthens as we cross it.

“Down!”

The moment I realize I’ve been shoved to the ground, I’m yanked back up.

“Go!”

I recognize Aren’s voice this time. He pushes me after Naito, who’s scrambling to his feet. I ignore the stitch in my side, the squirming kimki in my backpack, and keep running.

We make it to the trail, but if I thought the forest’s cover would ease some of my panic, I was wrong. I can’t see the vigilantes, but I can hear them. I hear their guns, their heavy breathing, their movements in the wet underbrush. They’re closing in on me. From my left. From my right. Shit, a camouflaged man steps right in front of me.

I skid to a stop as he raises his gun. Aims.

Aren fissures between us. A shot rings out. There’s a flash of steel as Aren’s sword cuts through the rain, cuts through the human.

Aren reaches back, grabs my arm, and thrusts me forward. “Follow Naito!”

I stumble over the gurgling vigilante, try to ignore the gaping slash angling from the top of his shoulder through his chest. My body wants to shut down, to stop moving. I’ve seen too much blood tonight, too much violence.

I crawl forward and then notice the little blue cell phone sticking out of the vigilante’s pocket. I tug it free—oh, God, I’m stealing from a dead guy—and bury it deep in my pocket.

Flipping my wet hair out of my face, I glance up. Naito’s just ahead. He peers over his shoulder, sees me down on all fours in the mud. I make a decision, scramble to my feet, spin, and run back toward the inn. After a few strides, I veer off the trail and carve my own path through the forest.

“McKenzie!” Naito shouts, but I’m sure he won’t follow me. He loves Kelia too much to risk her waiting for him at the gate. And Aren’s preoccupied. I should be able to escape long enough to make a phone call.

The underbrush entangles me. I shake loose, continue on, slipping and sliding over leaves and wet grass. I don’t know what direction I’m heading in, but I don’t care as long as it’s away.

The gunfire fades, and I no longer see fissures in the thick green of the forest. A hint of light peeks through the canopy above, and my pace slows when the trees thin up ahead. Cautious, I flatten myself against a thick oak and study the clearing. The inn isn’t located as deep into the forest as I imagined. An honest-to-goodness paved road lies just on the other side of the field. But running without cover makes me decidedly uneasy, especially when I’m not sure where I can find a safe haven.

I wrap my hands around the straps of my backpack and scan the road again, wondering how much traffic it gets on any given day, when, finally, God throws me a bone. To my left, no more than twenty yards away, an empty BMW is parked half obscured by an outcropping of trees. As an added bonus, I can get to it without crossing the field. I’m sure it belongs to the vigilantes. Hopefully, I can get to it before they return. If the fae leave any of them alive to return.

The rainwater drenching my hair and clothes weighs me down as I pick my way along the edge of the forest. With each step, I pray the humans left the keys in the car. I don’t know what I’ll do if they haven’t—I can’t hot-wire the thing—but as I draw near, I hear the engine purring beneath the sound of the falling rain. They’ve left it idling.

Taking my backpack off, I hurry to the driver’s-side door, open it, and fall inside. Sosch squeaks when I swing the bag into the passenger’s seat, but there’s no time to see if he’s okay. This seems all too convenient to go off without a hitch, but I’m already committed. I shift the car into reverse, then slam down the pedal. Too hard. The BMW fishtails in the wet grass before its tires catch. I curse and ram the gearshift into drive.

The back windows explode the next instant. Glass rains through the air. I duck behind the wheel, blindly steering as bullets thunk against the car’s sides. I accelerate over uneven ground, away from the attackers and toward where the road should be, before risking a quick peek over the dash.

Aren’s there. I slam on the brake as he cuts down a vigilante who had a gun aimed at me. He fissures, reappears behind another armed man, and strikes again. Three more vigilantes replace that one.

This time, Aren moves more slowly when he attacks. Two of the newcomers get shots off. Aren stumbles back. He loses his footing, slips, and lands hard on his back.

Maybe I could have driven away if he hadn’t caught my eye just then. I freeze, one foot hovering over the accelerator. The vigilantes will kill him. I shouldn’t care. I should let him die—he’s killed hundreds of fae—but leaving him here is too close to murder. I can’t do that, not when I’m in a position to help.

Cursing my conscience, I slam down the accelerator. I ram into the two humans, hard enough to knock them off their feet. Before they have a chance to recover, I pull up beside Aren and shove open the passenger door. “Get in.”

TEN

“YOU OKAY?” I ask, even though I don’t care. Really, I don’t. I’m fulfilling my humanitarian obligation by giving Aren a lift. After we put a few more miles of asphalt between us and the vigilantes, I’m kicking him to the curb and he’s on his own.

I glance at him. His right hand is wrapped around the pommel of his sword and he’s huddled against the car door as far away from the radio and air controls as he can get. His edarratae flash erratically, and he’s noticeably uncomfortable. When tech messes with a fae’s magic, it disorients them. Not much, at first, and they can ignore the dizziness for a while, but Aren’s weak and he’s injured. His cuirass is mottled with dents, and aside from his other scrapes and bruises, there’s that hole in his shoulder from the vigilantes’ first assault on the inn. His armor covers it up right now, but blood trickles down his left arm, dripping off his elbow and staining the seat’s upholstery.