Knight Fall Read online

  But I had a unique protection against Voidlings, afforded to me by the sale of my shadow in Atlantis:

  They hated me.

  Even, I believed, feared me.

  The rain lessened… But no, that was the Voidlings. More had appeared, blocking the sky, and the rainwater sizzled as it struck their oily skin. I wasn’t fighting one massive, seething creature but a flock of flying serpents that screeched like bats. The creatures drew closer, encasing me within a swirling mass of darkness—a darkness that radiated a subtle illumination, a not-light, just bright enough to see how royally fucked I was about to be.

  Yet none of them dared touch me. Trapped under a Void-umbrella…

  A vague, blurred form stepped out of the darkness, a twisted silhouette that seemed to bleed from the maelstrom of Voidlings under our umbrella. The form quickly took on a rough, humanoid shape.

  The not-light of the Void shone all the brighter, an impressive array of greys and gloominess that, against all reason, offered illumination. The oily darkness faded and became a pale, white face—a face I recognized all too well.

  “Huh,” I said. “Hello, handsome.”

  The glittering, smoky creatures poured themselves into the abomination standing before me, and drops of rain from the real world slipped through the darkness, leaving ragged holes in our umbrella. Thunder clapped far overhead, but I kept my eyes on a face I’d last seen in the Black Mirror—a pathway into the Void itself, locked away in my upstairs bathroom like the dark, dirty secret it was.

  “Declan,” the abomination rasped. His voice, although strained, was as familiar as his form. He offered me a half-empty bottle of something amber and aged. Scotch. “Care for a drink?”

  I was looking at what had become of my shadow.

  Chapter Three

  Mirrors

  I eyed the bottle of scotch and licked my lips. “No, thank you. I’m on the wagon, Shadowman.”

  The abomination’s eyes were entirely devoid of warmth, and his hollow cheeks were as pale as a corpse dead three days or more. The eyes that had bled into his face from the serpent-like Voidlings had turned pale blue, as if coated in a cataract film, and his hair hung dark brown and lank. He wore a rough imitation of my standard collared shirt and waistcoat, but on him the clothing looked old—worn and ragged, as if he’d been buried in it a long time ago.

  That was the general sense I got from the demon in human guise—something dead and buried.

  “Shadowman...” He grinned, lips the color of bruised skin. “I like that. Yes. I am Shadowman.”

  “How did you escape the Void? And what, may I ask, are these creatures you brought with you?”

  Shadowman smiled and ran his hand through the myriad squirming serpents just above him. “Void essence, Declan. Raw, malleable clay of the abstract—clay, which, in the right hands, can be molded to great effect.” He gave himself a brief round of applause. “And I escaped because of you, because your… soul, for lack of a better word, has seen the world with a new perspective these last few months.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are no longer exiled, and therefore, neither am I.” He tapped his forehead and winked at me. “Perception, how we perceive our absolute reality, is the only real truth. And truth, buddy—truth is like looking in a mirror: quite often familiar.”

  I guess that made a twisted kind of sense. Whatever this man had become, he was a piece of me, and by more than a little bit. My shadow was something abstract made tangible by the Everlasting Oblivion in the ruins of Atlantis those long, short years ago, and the Void existed only in the abstract. That was why thinking too long and too hard on the Void—particularly if one was Willful—could attract the attention of creatures from beyond time and space. The danger grew several orders of magnitude for those scant few who had faced down Voidlings and survived—or, worse, traversed the Void itself and managed to escape with life and some small measure of sanity intact.

  I had done all those things, more than once. So I did my best to not think of the Void at all. Not always easy, when the Void was often thinking of me.

  “Lord Oblivion created me.” Shadowman thrust a finger against my chest. “He tore me from you and cast me into the Void. The price for ending the Tome Wars, yes? Everything that I am, everything that I do, is your responsibility. You willingly allowed me to be birthed.”

  I maneuvered the shotgun into the comfortable nook against my shoulder and curled my finger around the trigger. “Perhaps I absolve myself of such responsibility right now.”

  Shadowman grasped the barrel and pressed it against his forehead. His dark brown bangs brushed the sight, and he grinned. “You think a concoction of star iron and archaic runes can stop me? I’m far too new for such old tricks.”

  I tilted my head and smirked. Damn it all, but I believed him. Still, I kept the business end of the gun trained on his heart. “So what is it you want, Shadowman? Did you just come on by tonight to say hello? Give me a heads up that you’re out and about on the winds of the rising storm? And tell me, did you damage sweet Emily Grace?”

  “The Immortal Queen…” Something dangerous, a snarl mired in rage that ran as dangerous as an ocean in storm, flittered across his pale face like a—well, like a shadow. “I did not touch her. I would not dare. As for my purpose, I am here to slay the Everlasting.”

  “Hallelujah and amen,” I said. The Void essence—still incessantly flying around us, blocking most of the rain and the wind—was beginning to make me dizzy. “But we’re all out of elder gods around here.”

  Shadowman grinned and gave me a quick salute with his scotch bottle. He swayed back and forth, as if drunk. “Aye, keep believing that a little while longer. Perhaps I just wanted to meet you, Declan—face to face, without that dark mirror between us.”

  “Am I going to have to kill you?” The shotgun was beginning to weigh on me. My finger twitched on the trigger. “You said this won’t do the job, but I’d still like to give it a shot.”

  “Perhaps I came to tell you that I may have used this handsome face of ours to stir up a bit of trouble in Ascension City earlier today.” He reached into his waistcoat, retrieved a folded newspaper, and held it out to me. “Or yesterday, depending on the time lost between here and there. The Void can be tricky like that.”

  I didn’t take the pages from him.

  Shadowman shrugged and held up the paper so I could read the headline.

  HISTORIAN OF FUTURE PROSPECT KIDNAPPED BY

  DECLAN HALE

  I read the headline then read it again, just to make sure I had the right of it. “You’re kidding,” I said. “No, no you are not kidding. Christ.”

  Shadowman grinned and tossed the paper aside. “She didn’t see that one coming.”

  “She’s just a kid,” I whispered.

  The Historian was far more than a kid, even if she were only sixteen. I’d last seen her half a year before, in the forests surrounding Ascension City. A pretty little thing, wise in the eyes. The Historian was a baby girl born with a rare gift—a curse, really. She could See the future. All possible futures. She could even—as was believed by more than a few—influence events to some degree.

  The Knights Infernal revered the Historian. Ascension City was never much for religion, but if there was one thing the Knights and the people of that world held sacrosanct, it was their belief in the purity and sanctity of the Historian of Future Prospect.

  To have kidnapped her… To have endangered her at all…

  “Where is she?” I demanded. “Take me to her now.”

  Shadowman waggled his finger back and forth. “You see what I am doing, yes? What must be done. Too long have the Knights ignored your—our—warnings about the Everlasting. Too long have they idled. I am forcing them to act. They will hunt me as the Historian leads me and my Voidlings against the Everlasting. They will have no choice but to fight.”

  “And be slaughtered,” I said, shaking my head. His plan was good in theory, but reality wo
uldn’t be so kind. “You don’t fight the Everlasting and win.”

  “Says the man who outfoxed Scion, the Younger God, only a few short months ago.” He tipped an invisible hat toward me. “Bravo, by the way. Fuck, but you make us look good.”

  I shook my head. “I bloodied his nose, at best—”

  “You plucked his eye from its socket with a weapon of celestial illusion. You did more than bloody the Everlasting. You made them fear. Can you conceive the breadth of time that has passed since the Elder Gods last feared anything?”

  I tapped the eye patch covering my eye. “That was revenge, pure and simple. His machinations cost me an eye.”

  Shadowman sighed and took a heavy swig from his scotch bottle. “They’ll be coming for you—sooner rather than later. And they’ll come in force. Hell, they may just turn this entire corner of the world into a blackened crater to ensure your destruction.” He snapped his fingers twice and pointed at me. “Oblivion didn’t understand what he created when he tore me from your soul. Blinded himself from the start, yes? So you can’t afford to sit on the sidelines any longer. Get your head back in the game, sunshine.”

  “They value this world. Scion wanted True Earth. Are you saying Oblivion is making a similar play?” I followed my shadow’s twisted thoughts down paths as dark as the Void itself, but I only had pieces of the puzzle and no way to know what move I should make next. “Why this world? I mean, besides—”

  “True Earth is the cradle of civilization,” Shadowman said, spreading his arms wide. “It is, was, and will be the beginning of… everything. The entire Story Thread, the millions of worlds dangling from the blasted spider web—Forget itself—began here. True Earth is the strongest link in the chain, the linchpin at the heart of the whole immense machine.” He laughed and precious scotch sloshed from his bottle. “Whoever controls True Earth controls all creation.”

  “If you’ve harmed the Historian in any way, I will end you.”

  “I believe you. Unlike the rest of creation, I’m not stupid enough to underestimate the fearsome Shadowless Arbiter.” Then Shadowman laughed and slapped his knees, as if underestimating me were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Oh, buddy, she’ll be fine. We’re going god-huntin’ on the morrow!”

  “I feel as if I should end you anyway. You know, on principle.”

  Shadowman bowed. “It is going to come to that, of course. You and I were stained with the blood of the innocent long before we were torn apart. Heh, broken quill, we don’t know how to do anything else.”

  I grunted and lowered the shotgun. “But not tonight. I’ll be coming for you, though. For the Historian. So will the Knights. You may look like me, but don’t for one second think that means you can play the game in my league.”

  Shadowman took another swig of liquid gold scotch, and my mouth watered. I wanted a drink more than anything in the world right then. He knew it, too. “No need to insult me,” he muttered. “To your health!” He raised the bottle and hurled it into the cobblestones, where it shattered into a thousand shards.

  The Void essence and Shadowman vanished in a clap of vicious thunder, and the rain poured down and swept the glass and scotch away.

  I hated that disappearing trick. All the biggest assholes I’d faced over the years had been capable of it, something to do with stepping sideways into the Void and skipping across universes like a river-smooth stone on a pond.

  The rain beat down harder than ever, plastering my fringe to my forehead again. I stood in the dark for a moment, accompanied by the deluge and the spent shotgun shells, and sighed.

  Shadows and Void light… Just what in all Forget had I unleashed upon the worlds now?

  Chapter Four

  Reunited Petals

  Back inside my shop, I filled Ethan and Sophie in on all that had happened, out in the cold and the wet and the... abstract. Rainwater pooled at my feet on the wooden floors as I cast a few quick heating enchantments to dry my soaked clothes.

  “So,” I said, once I’d relayed Shadowman’s tale and Sophie had healed the burn on my arm. “Shit meets fan again, I guess.”

  “I don’t get it,” Ethan said. “He looked like you?”

  “He is me, in a way.” I rubbed at the back of my neck. “The part of me torn away in Atlantis, to end the Tome Wars. My shadow.”

  “Shadows are dark…” Sophie muttered. “He’s you without a filter, isn’t he? Like, he’s Declan Hale unleashed.” She shivered and crossed her arms over her chest. “You without five years of exile to calm you down after what happened in Atlantis. Broken quill, he’s dangerous.”

  That was a fine way of putting it. ‘Declan Hale unleashed’… as if I were naught but a weapon or a disease.

  I threw up my hands, sighed, and sat down on the edge of the coffee table, opposite slumbering Emily. “You know, for the longest time I thought I was clear of all this… bullshit.” I smiled grimly. “Most people can hide their darker urges. Mine broke away, drank a fifth of scotch, and just declared war on the fucking multiverse. The Knights… will be pissed.”

  Ethan took a deep breath. “You’re going back to Forget again, aren’t you?”

  “I made Shadowman. He is me. I’ll stop him or die trying.”

  “What about her?” Sophie nodded at Emily. “What’s she doing here, you think? Bit too coincidental them both showing up, and she in such bad condition.”

  I nodded and stroked the rough stubble coating my chin. “Coincidence, no, but I believed that… shadow, out there, when he said he didn’t do this to Em.”

  “So who or what did?” Ethan asked.

  “Something competent,” I said. “Something or someone who thinks they’re beyond reprisal.”

  Out in the plaza, flashing blue and red lights played with the shadows and the rainfall, bathing my dreary shop in alternating splashes of color. Someone knocked on the door, and I had a good idea who it was. I stepped through the labyrinth of books, veered through endless shelves of fiction and horror, and opened the front door.

  “Good evening, Detective Brie.” I strained to keep the smile from my face. Annie Brie had been far too absent over the last few weeks, and I enjoyed her company.

  It wasn’t easy, stepping back into the real world, after going through something like what she’d gone through. I feared she had been avoiding me, trying to make sense of things and no doubt questioning the strange connection we now shared.

  “Declan.” She stepped forward as if to hug me. She caught herself, blinked twice, and offered her hand.

  We shook firmly. Behind Annie, out in the night, a patrol car idled alongside the road that ran around the plaza. Two uniformed officers stood in the rain, flashlights in hand, scouring the ground through the surge of water sweeping toward the Indian Ocean.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked.

  Annie fixed me with a stare that suggested she knew that I knew just why she was brightening up my door in the early hours of the morning—a morning that was creeping up on a dawn I was probably going to miss. “Call came through on the scanner that someone was firing off shotgun rounds in the middle of the night. I caught the address and thought I may be able to crack this case in about five seconds flat. What happened?”

  “Ah, it was meant to be a surprise.”

  Annie blinked. “What?”

  “The shotgun—I was modifying the darn thing for you, give you a bit of an edge in case you came up against something like Emissary again.” I stepped aside so she could cross the threshold and get out of the rain, which was dwindling. “Well, no, not like Emissary, but creatures of Forget that need a stronger wallop than that service pistol of yours can deliver.”

  Annie shook the water from her brown leather jacket and ran her hands back through her dark, wet hair. In the dull light afforded from my fleeting chandeliers, her face looked drawn, tired, and her jade-green eyes seemed a touch sunken. She was still pretty—beautiful, even—but the toll of our adventures those few months ago seemed to s
till be exacting a cost.

  “So you were using an unlicensed firearm in the middle of the night?” She glanced over her shoulder at the uniformed officers sweeping the ground across the plaza. “Are those two going to find evidence of that?”

  Had all the spent shells washed away? Doubtful, even in this rain. “Very likely,” I said.

  Annie sighed. “Do I want to know just what you were shooting at?”

  I shrugged. “Essence of the Void, creatures spawned in the space between universes, and… well, my shadow. I was shooting at shadows.”

  “You don’t have a shadow,” she said wearily. “You sold it to save the world or something, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe you should come in and sit down. This…” I chuckled and closed the door behind her. “This may take a touch of explaining. Ethan and Sophie are here and…” I trailed away, thinking of Emily on the couch. She and Annie had met once, at Paddy’s Pub, just before Emissary had blown up the damn place. Annie knew who she was, the Immortal Queen of the Renegades, but I doubted she grasped just what that meant. “And someone you’ve met once before. She’s sleeping, and I only ask that you be kind.”

  Annie gave me a funny look as I led her to the windowed alcove near the register. “Who is it?”

  I offered her a wry grin as we emerged from the stacks and beheld my companions in the half-light. “The woman who killed me.”

  Annie gazed at Emily, and her lips pursed together in a grim line.

  Chapter Five

  Hunted

  “Hello, Miss Brie,” Sophie said.

  “Sophie, Ethan,” Annie replied, inclining her head. “Could you not have stopped Declan from discharging that shotgun I see resting so incriminatingly on the counter?”