Текст книги "The Shadows"

Автор книги: J. R. Ward

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Текущая страница: 39 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

SEVENTY-SEVEN

When Trez came awake, his face and his pillow were wet. Wiping his cheeks, he splayed his fingers out and looked at them glistening in the lamplight.

So.

This was the other side of it all.

Letting his arms flop back to the bed, he stared up at the ceiling. On some level, he couldn’t believe he was still here. Physically and mentally.

Had his room always been so quiet?

Jesus, every time he took a deep breath, his chest hurt like he’d broken all his ribs. Twice apiece.

And then there was the movie reel of torture: With each blink of his lids, another part of the loss played across his retinas—and he had to wonder if maybe this was what had been going on in his sleep and why he’d woken up as he had.

Part of him wanted the incessant processing to stop. Another part was terrified that if it did, it would mean that that forgetting thing he was so worried about was already starting.

How long had he been asleep?

He stayed where he was for a minute or two—or maybe it was hours? Or nights?—and then he threw out an arm and patted around for his phone. When he called up the screen to read the time, there were tons of notifications about texts and missed calls and voice mails, but he didn’t have the strength to go through them all.

Putting the cell back down, he realized the second he let go of the thing that the time hadn’t registered.

Where was Selena? he wondered.

Addressing the ceiling, he said, “Are you up there?”

What had she seen? Was there a Fade?

Funny, he hadn’t anticipated the fear he had now, but he probably should have. The idea that he didn’t know whether she was okay or not after death was something he was going to have to live with.

Until he passed himself, he guessed. And then if it was just a big black void? Well, then he wouldn’t exist to care.

Happy thought.

When he finally went to sit up, he gasped as pain exploded all over his body—sure as if the emotional agony in his soul had manifested itself in his flesh, his muscles stiff, his bones aching.

It was from the preparation ritual.

Maybe it would fade in a day or two.

He got up and used the bathroom. Brushed his teeth. Checked in with his stomach.

No, food was not a priority.

Drink might be good.

Yet even as those internal thoughts registered, it was from a distance, as if they were being yelled at him from across a football field.

Heading back out into his bedroom, he went over to the closet and opened the double doors. As the lights came on, he recoiled.

He could still smell her.

And two of her robes hung among his clothes.

Walking forward, he reached out to them, but ultimately hesitated to touch the folds of white fabric, especially as the raw wound behind his sternum flared up in pain again.

It was, he decided, kind of like a cut on your finger, one that didn’t hurt until you flexed your thumb—and then the thing really stung. Except on a much grander scale, of course.

Was this what it was going to be like? Him going through his nights and days bumping into random things and getting jolted back into the depths of his grief?

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said to her clothes, “without you.”

And he wasn’t just talking about getting dressed.

When there was no reply—but come on, like he expected her ghost to answer?—he took the nearest pants and shirt that he got to, threw them on his body, and walked out. For a good ten minutes, he stood in the center of the room and entertained the temptation to trash everything around him. But his body didn’t have the strength or the coordination, and his emotions couldn’t sustain the boil of the anger he felt.

He looked over at the window Selena had broken. She had been magnificent in her fury, so alive, so . . .

Holy shit, he was going to drive himself insane.

On his way to the door, he picked up his cell phone out of habit and then stopped in front of the exit to his room. He was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for pitying looks or prying questions. But he thought he’d seen that the shutters were still down?

Yup.

So hopefully the whole Last Meal thing would have been long cleaned up and the doggen retired for their brief rest before the daytime cleaning started up.

He thought he’d seen a seven in the time.

Yeah. Seven something o’clock in the morning, the numbers had said.

Grasping the brass doorknob, he felt like he was back downstairs at the clinic, when he’d gone to leave the examination room after all that time with Selena’s body: this was another portal he was going to have to push himself through.

With a twist of the wrist, he released the mechanism and put some weight into the—

On the bald floor across from his bedroom, iAm was horizontal and out cold in the hallway, his head on the curl of his arm, a half-consumed, fully capped bourbon bottle cozied up to his chest like a loyal dog, his brows down like even in his sleep he was dealing with shit.

Trez took a deep breath.

It was good to know the male was still with him.

But he was not waking the guy up.

Stepping with care so he didn’t disturb his brother, he found himself wanting to take this first trip out into the world on his own.

Down at the bottom of the shallow stairs, he did another brace-yourself with a door latch—and wondered how long it was going to take to get himself over that habit—then he pushed things open.

“. . . you bunch of photophobic freaks.”

Shaking himself, he frowned.

Lassiter, the fallen angel, was in the doorway to Wrath’s study, hands on his hips, blond-and-black hair pulled back in a braid. “You’d better show some fucking respect or I’m not going to say one damn thing about what I found out on my little trip to the Territory.”

From inside the room, there were all kinds of muttering.

“No,” Lassiter said, “I want you to say you’re sorry, Vishous.”

It was so weird. Like a camera lens that was suddenly focusing, Trez came back online, his senses sharpening, some shadow of his former self returning.

“I’m waiting.” There was a pause. “Good enough. And I want the remote for the next week—days and nights.”

Incredible grousing, and someone threw something at the guy, the coaster landing on the carpet outside the room.

“Well, if you’re going to get nasty again—”

Following an instinct, Trez dematerialized—at the very instant Lassiter dropped the asshole act and shot a shrewd glance in the direction of where Trez had been standing.

His presence had been sensed.

But he would not allow that to happen again.

Shadowing along the carpet, he seeped into the study as Lassiter stepped inside, closed the doors and addressed the Brotherhood.

“We got a map?” the angel said.

Being careful to stay out of the way of anyone’s feet, lest they tweak to his altered state, Trez pooled in the corner farthest away from Wrath’s dog. Fortunately, George was sound asleep by his master’s throne.

The Brotherhood clustered around Wrath’s desk as Butch flipped a blue-and-green, three-foot-by-three-foot square of paper out of its folds.

“Here,” the angel said, pointing with his forefinger. “This is where I found it. There’s a retaining wall that runs around the entire property. Dwellings are here and here. The palace . . . right here. Security is tight, and from what I was able to see, they are gathering their forces.”

Gathering forces? Trez thought.

“We need to get to them first,” Wrath muttered. “First strike is critical. We don’t want them coming into Caldwell.”

What the hell was going on?

“. . . can’t find this house. No one can find this house,” V said. “But yeah, I’ll stay behind. I don’t like it, but someone needs to be here on a just-in-case.”

Lassiter looked across the desk at the Brother and proved that he could get serious if he had to: “I gotchu. I’ll be here, too.”

There was a split second where the males stared into each other’s eyes. “Good,” V said. “That’s good.”

“Where’s iAm?” Wrath asked.

“Last I saw of him,” Rhage answered, “he was heading upstairs to check on Trez and crash.”

“We need to make sure he keeps Trez under this roof. I don’t want that Shadow getting kidnapped in the middle of this. I’m happy to fight—shit, I’m looking forward to it—but I don’t want them getting a hold of the poor bastard. That’s a complication I don’t want to have to worry about.”

What the fuck?

This was all about him?

* * *

Trez stayed in that French study, with those Brothers and fighters, until he learned everything he needed to know—and then he had to get gone before Rehvenge arrived from having readied his people up north in the symphath colony.

His old friend the sin-eater would have known he was in there.

When it was time to go, he didn’t take a chance. He shadowed out under the door and continued on down the grand staircase, across the foyer’s mosaic floor . . . and out farther, passing through the minuscule gaps in the jambs of the vestibule’s entrance and exit.

Outside, the sun was rising over the autumnal landscape, golden and pink rays hitting the yellow and orange and red leaves as well as the bristly dark green pine boughs and spiky cedar branches.

He did not reassume form until he was some distance away from the house, although the security cameras would no doubt register the appearance of his presence anyway. The good news, if you could call it that, was that the Brothers were all talking about the upcoming battle, so they weren’t going to be going ADT on shit. And if one of the doggen happened to see him out here? They would just assume he was out for a walk to clear his head.

He hadn’t put on a jacket, and he was glad.

The cold slapped him even further awake.

Even though it had been sinking in for a good hour, he still couldn’t believe any of it: the Queen declaring war on Wrath and the Brotherhood. Their refusing to turn him over. The sin-eaters joining in on the side of the vampires.

He couldn’t believe that there were so many prepared to rally to his cause.

“Selena?” he said, letting his head fall back so that he was looking at the heavens.

No stars because of the daylight.

No clouds, for that matter.

Nothing but pale blue.

Trez thought about that time he had tried to escape the palace and had ended up slaughtering all those guards in front of s’Ex. So much bloodshed.

Only back then, it had been strangers to him.

If he thought that had been bad, shit was going to be so much worse if the Brotherhood went into the Territory. They would ultimately prevail, with the sin-eaters at their backs . . . but there would be death. Maiming.

More lives ruined.

Turning around, he looked up at the great gray mansion.

However dour the exterior of the manse was, the interior was full of life and love and family.

If this war went forward, where he was in his mourning, this terrible stretch of pain, was going to rain down upon this house and the people in it.

He would not put someone he hated in his shoes, living with this loneliness and heartache.

He could not put those he loved where he was.

Not if there were a way to stop it.

At the very moment he made his decision, a ray of sunlight broke across the rooftop, that incredible light spilling down over the orderly rows of slate.

Selena had made him swear he would live without her, and he had given her that vow, but only because she’d forced him to.

It wasn’t as if he’d believed what he’d told her.

Now, though, as he imagined all the lives he could save, how he could protect these males and females and their young?

“This is as close as I can come, my queen,” he said to the sky.

SEVENTY-EIGHT

It took them forever to get to the sacred astrology chamber.

Or at least it seemed that way to Catra. Then again, with every corner they turned, and each straightaway traveled down, she expected to get jumped, arrested, sent to a prison cell.

Along the way, s’Ex revealed to her hidden rooms and passageways she’d had no clue about—and proved himself to be capable beyond measure: sure of foot, fleet of mind, both careful and aggressive.

Finally, however, they not only gained access to the palace and its grounds, but the innermost restricted areas of her mother’s compound where few were allowed and security was at its highest. They had one advantage, at least: The guards who were in search of her were preoccupied with looking on the exterior, convinced they had searched the Queen’s domain sufficiently—and the rest of s’Ex’s males were gathering in the center courtyard and preparing to fight.

It was a grim affair. The lot of it.

But they were able to move faster and with, thus far, no notice.

Part of her wanted to check to make sure her mother was following the rituals so that they would not be chanced upon in the astrology chamber, but there could be no risking a reveal of her presence.

They had one and only one chance to get to the records.

“Here,” s’Ex whispered as he stopped abruptly.

She frowned under her hood. “The entrance to the chamber is up farther ahead, is it not.”

“No, our entry is here.”

Freeing his hand from his robing’s voluminous sleeve, he placed his palm against the wall. Instantaneously, a pocket door slid open, disappearing into its slot.

The moment she smelled the incense, she knew they were close, and yet the space revealed was pitch-black.

She stepped in without hesitation, and felt s’Ex’s looming weight come in behind her. When the door shut itself, she might as well have been blindfolded.

Keeping his voice down, s’Ex said, “Reach out ahead of you.”

As she followed the command, she felt something rough.

“Walk to the left,” he commanded. “Keep your hand on the wall to guide you.”

When she did, she slammed right into his chest. “Sorry.”

He turned her around. “Your other left.”

Shuffling along, she could barely breathe. They must be going parallel to the corridor outside, she thought, this inner space a shadow of the outer, public one.

“I built these passages,” he whispered. “I know them by heart.”

“Very smart of you—”

“Stop.”

Obeying him, she dropped her hand. “Now what.”

“Look to your right.”

At first, when she did, she saw nothing save more blackness. Except . . . no. There were tiny fissures of glowing red in the wall, as if some ghostly hand had drawn a pattern of dots with a mystical pen.

Tiles, she thought with awe. They were on the opposite side of a tiled partition.

Reaching her hand back out, she touched them.

“Let me go first,” he said. “And do not come out until I say so.”

Stepping aside so that he could trade places with her, she watched as his tremendous palm cut a swath into the subtle cubic pattern. . . .

When he pushed, the tiles broke apart on a seam that was uneven. Except nothing cracked or crumbled; there was no structural damage. It had been built to accommodate such access.

And beyond was a strange, overwhelming light source.

s’Ex walked forward into the circular chamber beyond with that serrated blade up in front of him, ready to attack.

“Clear,” he hissed.

Taking a deep breath, she left the darkness for that amazing light.

Except it wasn’t anything magical. It was normal candlelight, housed in a room of magnificent red marble.

Wait, no, the illumination wasn’t from wicks. It was the sun, pouring through an immense, curved sheet of glass in the ceiling. And when it was nighttime, she reflected, one would be able to keenly observe and monitor the stars from the transparent oculus.

They moved in silence across the space, their soft-soled shoes lending themselves to muffled footfalls over the red marble flooring. In the center of the room, there was a circle cut in the floor, perhaps for a dais that lifted up like the one in the reception area at the palace? There was no furniture, no wall hangings, nothing that would impede one’s devoted concentration.

More importantly, there was nobody else around.

Three doors. There were three doors . . . one that opened to the concourse. One that was probably the private residence of the Chief Astrologer. And the other . . .

“The record room is through there,” s’Ex said, pointing at that third door.

Denoted by its gold jamb, and the inscribed words above it, the sacred place could not be mistaken, and she felt a shimmer of awe even with the pressures of time and circumstance dampening all her emotions.

Striding forward, she put her hand out—

“No. Your palm won’t work.”

s’Ex placed his on the correct spot on the smooth, unmarked panel and . . .

Nothing happened.

He tried again. “They’ve removed me from the computer. And chances are I’ve just set off an alarm.” Turning to her, he said, “We have to get out of here. Now.”

“No! I need to see—”

“We don’t have time to argue.” Grabbing her hand, he began to drag her back across to the secret passageway. “I don’t want your death on my conscience.”

Yanking against his far superior strength, she blurted, “I think my mother has engineered the birth records!”

s’Ex froze. “What?”

Catra kept pulling against his hold and got nowhere. She might as well have been tied to a tree. “I can’t be certain until I get in there. But I believe she may have deliberately altered birthing records to her own ends. I need to get in there to be sure. Please.”

s’Ex reached up and removed his headdress, and as he let it fall to the smooth red floor, his eyes narrowed and flashed peridot.

“How sure,” he demanded.

“Willing to put my life on it. And yours.”

His decision was announced as he looked at the locked door—and then, without making any fuss, he took two leaps toward it . . . and buried that serrated blade right into what turned out to be a seam.

Either that, or he simply made one.

Placing both hands on the knife’s hilt, he put his tremendous weight to the side and crack! He made an entry into the small gold room.

“Make it fast,” he said grimly.

Catra wasted no time. Running over the chips of stones, she jumped inside and slid on the gold floor, throwing her arms out to balance herself.

Numbers. She saw a thousand gold drawers marked by numbers.

It was all arranged by birth date, not name.

Closing her eyes, she cursed. She had no idea when Trez had been born.

Except, wait—up high on the right, there were two drawers that were not gold. They were white.

Heart pounding, hands shaking, she rose up on her tiptoes and pulled out the top one. The drawer was as deep as her arm, and she had to catch the back of it lest the contents spill out.

No, it had a lid.

Putting the thing down to the floor and opening the top, she found four rolled sheets of parchment, each tied with a ribbon of silk and sealed with red wax that bore the Queen’s star. Other than that they were not labeled. One was smaller than the others.

She took out the first she came to and broke its seal, unrolling the document on the floor. It was so old, the parchment cracked in places and so resented the flattening, she needed to put a lip of the thing under the drawer and kneel on the other end to keep it flat so she could look the chart over.

Sacred symbols and writing in black pen were interspersed with countless red and gold dots that, when she leaned back, formed a constellation.

It was her mother’s birth chart.

She let the thing curl up on itself and put it aside. The next . . . was her chart, and it, too, resisted an awakening from its slumber. The third . . .

The third unfurled itself as she released the bow and broke the seal, and as she leaned over to read it, she smelled the sweet scent of the fresh ink and paint that had been applied to the parchment. This brand-new chart was the infant’s, and the ritual death was marked in each corner with black stars—showing that the soul had been returned to the heavens. Or at least that was her interpretation.

After a moment of sadness, she set the thing aside.

The fourth one, the smaller one, had to be Trez’s. And indeed, when she unfolded it, she was right. For one, in the scribing, there were notations that it was a male, and born with a twin—it was this momentous birthing occasion that had first sparked interest in Trez and iAm. Catra could remember all her life palace staff remarking about the unusual and special occurrence.

His chart was not as big as the other three because he was not a royal, but in the corners of the parchment there were golden stars, showing an ascension to the heights of the Shadow court.

Sitting back on her heels, she read through its notations and symbols.

Then shook her head.

She had been so sure . . . and yet nothing seemed amiss.

“Stand down,” she heard s’Ex say out in the circular room. “Or, as much as it pains me, I shall have to kill you all.”

Wrenching around, Catra looked through the messy portal s’Ex had made for her.

Three guards, dressed in black, had surrounded the executioner, and they had their knives out.

Oh, stars above . . . what had she done?

She had made a terrible mistake coming here. What arrogance to think she had ascertained some secret that would save them all.

And now, there was nowhere to run. No way to win against what was surely just the first squadron of many that had been sent for them.

She did not want to die.

Reaching forward, she picked up the long, thin, heavy drawer. It was the only weapon she had—

For some reason—and later she would wonder exactly why—as Trez’s chart rolled up on itself, resuming the shape it had been trained to prefer, she looked down at the thing.

The floor had been perfectly clean as she had entered, no dust marring its surface, no scuffs, no scratches.

But now there were chips of . . . paint . . . and little flakes . . . around where the chart had rolled itself up.

Frowning, she put the drawer aside and flattened the parchment back out.

As the sounds of fighting commenced in the gazing room, folds of robes flapping, grunts and groans sounding so very loud and close, she leaned over the sacred writing.

In the center of the chart, a portion of the paint had chipped off.

Revealing . . .

The exhale that left her mouth was the result of her ribs seizing up.

And to make sure she was not imagining things, she reread what she thought she was seeing.

Then she took her fingernail and flicked it under the cover-up that had been executed.

“Oh . . . Fates . . .” she breathed.

Scrambling to her feet, she raced over to the boxes where the charts of the subjects of the s’Hisbe were kept. Her eyes bounced around, searching for the right birth number, and when she found that drawer, she slid it out, put it on the floor, and lifted the lid.

The civilian records were tied with strings that had little tags on them, and they were in no particular order, some twenty different scrolls shoved in together. With her breath panting out of her mouth, and her hands shaking, she rifled through them as quickly as she could.

When she found the one she was looking for, she rushed back to the doctored document.

Putting them side by side, with the drawer at the very top, she stretched them out.

Sure enough, there was a patch in the center of the second one, the area of cover up painted in with such care that the doctoring wouldn’t have been noticed at the time. It had, however, aged badly over the course of the years.

Chipping it free, she found . . . that in fact . . . the Anointed One was not Trez.

Of the pair of twins, he had been born second, not first.

It was iAm who was the sacred male.

In spite of the mortal danger outside, she slumped over the records, putting her hands to her face.

Why had they switched them? Why—

“Princess,” s’Ex barked. “We need to get out of here—”

“She switched the records.”

“What?”

Catra looked at him over her shoulder, and recoiled at the amount of blood on his sleeves, his robes, his face and hands. But there was no time to get rattled. “The Queen switched the records of the infants, of Trez and iAm. I don’t know why, though.” She pointed to the doctored parts of the charts. “It’s right here. The Chief Astrologer is the one who prepares the most sacred charts for royalty, not the Tretary. So he must have done this, and AnsLai had to have known. But what’s the benefit—

“Behind you!” she screamed.

Just as the guard who had appeared at s’Ex’s back raised a knife over his head, the executioner wheeled around—with his own blade at throat height. Within the blink of an eye, s’Ex overpowered the guard by slitting the male’s jugular open, red blood splashing out.

Horrified by the sight of the death, Catra could feel her mind departing, sure as a spectator might retreat at a fighting contest that had turned too violent.

But, as with what s’Ex said about regrets, she didn’t have that kind of luxury.

Rolling up the charts, she put Trez’s and iAm’s in with hers and her mother’s in the box. s’Ex’s infant daughter’s was still on the floor—and she nearly left it behind.

At the last minute, however, she reached over and began to roll it up—and that was when she felt an odd cool spot. In the center.

Why would parchment be cool?

She flattened the chart out again . . . and ran her fingertips over the surface. When she got to the middle, there was a subtle change of temperature.

Because a thickened area of paint was still drying.

That was the source of the sweet smell.

They had doctored the infant’s as well.

“Time’s up, Princess,” s’Ex said with urgency. “We—”

“Give me your knife.”

“What?”

“Clean it off and give me your knife,” she commanded, putting out her hand.