The Brandon-shadow barked a short command, wordless and wild, and the remaining two shadows broke away and backed up, limping and snarling their rage. After a few more wails and whimpers, the family turned and loped away, vanishing down the other end of the alley.
The fifth shadow turned toward us, its breathing harsh and irregular. I heard Tansy gasping for breath at my side, trying to rise despite the way her legs and arms shook. I put a hand on her shoulder, my own fingers trembling.
Though she could not have understood, Tansy slumped back, too weary to try again.
I summoned every ounce of courage and stepped forward. The shadow snarled a warning, half-fury, half-anticipation. The hunger in its voice was unmistakable.
I swallowed, licked my lips.
“Oren?”
He didn’t react, his white eyes fixed on my face, his teeth bared and bloody from the wounds he’d inflicted and received. His hands clenched and unclenched, the muscles in his legs quivering as he stood there, struggling with himself. He twitched forward only to jerk back, the tendons standing out on his forearms, in his neck.
I started to lift my hand and too late remembered that it was the one holding the knife.
The shadow leaped forward, raging, grasping at my shirt and jerking me in close so that I felt the heat of his breath, smelled the grass and the wind and the metallic tang of blood. He growled a low, desperate, drawn-out sound.
The growl turned to a gasping groan, the breath shuddering in and out of him. He stumbled forward, his body heavy against me. Suddenly the hand twisted in the fabric of my shirt wasn’t holding me close—it was holding him up, and my knees sagged with his weight.
He coughed and reached out with his other hand for me, trying to keep himself from falling. He lifted his eyes, anguished—for the briefest instant I saw them flicker from white to palest blue.
Then his grip failed and he dropped like a stone, unconscious before he hit the ground.
CHAPTER 5
He looked exactly as he had the day he left. I’d memorized every contour and feature of his face in that moment when he’d looked back over his shoulder at me. I traced them now, my fingertips shaking. His skin was clear again, all signs of the dark grey veins and semitranslucent flesh gone. Long, fair eyelashes, stubborn jaw, sandy hair that fell wildly over his forehead.
Despite the evidence of my eyes five minutes ago, it was nearly impossible to believe he was a monster, looking at him now. I tried to remind myself that no matter how human he seemed when he was feeding off my magic, he was a shadow and always would be. The moment he left my side, he’d become mindless, dark, and hungry. The moment I ran out of magic to keep him human, I’d be dead.
My mind was blank. I’d thought I would never see this boy again. Or, at the very least, if I did, he’d kill me before I had a chance to figure out what I thought of him.
I’ll find you. His last words to me hung so vividly in the air that for a moment, I thought he’d woken up and spoken. Even in the dark, you shine.“My pack.”
I jerked away from my inspection of Oren’s face and turned to see Tansy, half-propped awkwardly against the wall, one eye swollen shut and her arm still dangling uselessly at her side.
“My pack,” she moaned again. “I need my pack. I need my pack.”
I left Oren’s side and crouched, fumbling with the straps of my own pack in my haste to take it off. I knew what she needed. To regenerate magic required energy, and that required food.
“Your pack’s in the house, Tansy. But I have food here. See, look—cheese. Take it.”
But she shoved my hands away, trying to stand. “No—my pack. I need it.”
“Tansy!” I hissed, trying not to shout and alert any other shadows who might be nearby. “We can’t go back. We have to leave it. Even if the shadows didn’t return there, we can’t get past those barricades and we can’t climb up to that window to get back inside.” I reached out and took her good shoulder, giving her a squeeze. “It’s gone. Accept that. We have to keep moving, we can’t stay here.”
She’d started to shiver, and I realized I had too. Neither of us had had time to grab our jackets before fleeing the building. If we didn’t find shelter, and soon, then Tansy’s shock was going to be the least of our worries.
I heard a familiar sound and straightened, letting Tansy slump back again. A weight lifted, letting me take my first full breath since the Molly-shadow had lunged for me. Nix came winging fitfully up the alley, the grind of its gears harsh and irregular. I moved toward it and held out my hands. It shifted midair, spiky form reverting to that of a bee, and dropped gratefully into my palms.
“I followed them,” it said, voice unusually tinny. “They’re gone, they didn’t turn around to come back. That one scared them off.” Its blue eyes turned to the motionless form lying unconscious in the middle of the alley.
“And you?” I whispered, lifting my hands so I could try and inspect the pixie in the meager moonlight. “Are you okay?”
“I will require some time to repair myself, but I will soon be fully functional.” Already I saw it shifting, tiny needlelike arms emerging to begin bending damaged panels and pieces back into the correct shapes.
“Thank you.” Carefully I transferred the little machine to my shoulder. “You saved us.”
It clicked with irritation as it inspected my torn earlobe. “Keep Lark alive,” it said absently, dismissively, in its programmer’s voice. Kris’s voice. I tried to ignore the surge of hurt and confusion that sound brought and turned back for Tansy.
“We can’t stay here, Tansy. Can you walk? Did you eat?”
She took a bite of the cheese, uninterested but following orders. Only after she swallowed did a little spark return to her eyes as she discovered her appetite. She finished the rest ravenously and licked her fingertips.
“Your arm?”
“I think my shoulder’s dislocated,” Tansy said with a grimace, picking herself up with some difficulty, but managing to get to her feet on her own power. I was never so functional after my own experiences with having my power harvested from me.
“What do we do?”
“Pop it back in.” Though the grin she flashed at me was nearly feral with exhaustion and pain, it was still Tansy’s grin, and a second wave of relief washed over me. We could do this. Recover. Survive. Find a way out of this cursed city.
“Tell me what to do.”
By the time it was done, I was the one who had to stagger away and put my head between my knees, sweating and trying not to throw up. I could still feel the scrape and pop of bone under my hands radiating through me like the scratch of nails on a schoolroom chalkboard.
When I felt more sure I wasn’t about to lose the dinner I’d eaten not two hours before, I helped Tansy make a sling for her arm. She’d regained a little color in her face, but it was clear her arm wasn’t going to be useful for some time.
“My bow is outside the house,” Tansy said, remembering. “Not inside. They made me leave it. We can go back for it.”
“No. You can’t draw it like that,” I said, nodding at her arm. “It’d be useless.”
“But—it’s my bow.” She was staring at me like I’d suggested she leave one of her legs behind.
“I know. But Tansy—it’s just a thing. If we go back that way we risk the family finding us again. What if the entire city is full of people who turn into shadows at night? That whole street will be full of shadows trying to break through their own doors to get to us.”