“Wait, there!” Bethany exclaimed. Isaac froze the images. She pointed at one of the monitors, where two shapes could be seen walking through the gas station parking lot. “Those are the men from the auto body shop,” she said.
“Tomo and Big Joe,” Gabrielle said before I had a chance to. It was eerie how much she knew about my life now.
Isaac began the playback again. Onscreen, Tomo and Big Joe walked with an aggressive gait, angry after their humiliation at the auto body shop. They weren’t used to losing. The bravado and posturing also masked how worried they likely were about how Underwood would react once he learned the box had slipped through their fingers. Underwood didn’t take kindly to failure. They entered the fallout shelter through the storm doors at the back of the station. Then all was quiet. No one else approached the gas station before it exploded.
“Whatever caused this, it must have happened inside the building,” Isaac said.
We watched the feed unfold again. This time we could see that the blast didn’t come from inside the abandoned gas station itself, but beneath it, from the fallout shelter.
There was no way anyone could have survived the explosion. I wondered if Underwood had been there, too. It was a possibility. After driving away from the auto body shop, he probably would have gone straight back to the fallout shelter to plan his next move.
Did that mean they were all dead?
“Wait, hold it,” Gabrielle said suddenly. She’d been poring over the images on the monitors for clues, and now she pointed to one of the screens. The picture was angled from across Empire Boulevard, catercorner to the gas station and high above street level. A traffic camera. “Isaac, go back. Go back on this one.”
The feed rewound as Isaac tapped the keyboard. The playback began again. This time I saw what had caught her eye. It was just barely visible behind the inferno, but it was there. It was unmistakable.
A flock of big, black birds taking off into the sky.
“Are those crows?” Bethany asked.
Isaac said, “The Black Knight.”
I watched the birds fly into the sky until they were nothing but tiny digital dots. “What the hell was the Black Knight doing there?”
“Looking for you,” Bethany said.
“Me? Why?”
“You’re the only one who’s ever taken him on and lived,” she pointed out. “It’s like Ingrid said, you got his attention. He must have traced your footsteps back to the gas station.”
I looked at the raging fire on all six monitors. “So this was meant for me?”
Isaac shook his head, squinting at the screens. “Something’s not right. This kind of flagrant, wholesale destruction doesn’t seem like the Black Knight’s style at all—”
Philip interrupted, tensing suddenly. “Someone’s here. Citadel’s ward has been breached.”
“What? That’s impossible,” Isaac said, standing out of his chair.
“Just like at the safe house,” Bethany said. “It’s happening again.”
“What the hell is going on? Are wards just giving out all over the damn city?” Isaac demanded. “Philip, how many of them are there?”
Philip looked up at the ceiling, his lips pulling back from his sharp teeth. “I can hear them on the roof, but I can’t see them. They’re not giving off any body heat at all.” He inhaled sharply through his nose, then cringed. “Ugh, they smell stale and dry, like dust.”
A bright flash of lightning illuminated the stained-glass windows. Two silhouettes appeared in the light, one in each window, swinging down from the roof on long ropes. Just before they hit, the shapes vanished and the ropes thumped, empty, against the glass.
A second later, the two figures reappeared just inside the windows, somersaulting through the air above us. I caught a glimpse of lithe bodies clad head to toe in black leather. They landed together in the middle of the room in a graceful, wide-legged stance, turned their steel-masked faces toward us, and drew katanas from the scabbards on their backs.
Shadowborn.
Twenty-seven
Instinct had me reaching for my gun before I remembered I didn’t have it anymore. Philip had taken it from me at the auto body shop, and he still had it. Not that it would do any good against the shadowborn anyway, but I felt naked without it.
Isaac acted quickly, not waiting for the shadowborn to attack first. Something bright and crackling burst from his outstretched hands and raced toward them. The shadowborn brought up their katanas, using the polished steel blades to deflect the blasts into the walls. They left seared, smoking holes in the wood.
Then the shadowborn vanished. Before we could react, they reappeared right in front of us. They pulled back their katanas, ready to strike. Philip moved like a bullet, his supernatural speed allowing him to get his arms around one for a moment before it dematerialized. He skidded to a stop halfway across the room, empty-handed. He turned, ready to go after the second shadowborn, but it chose that moment to vanish, too.
Gabrielle scanned the room nervously. “Where did they go?” Her voice wavered. She was terrified.
“How the hell did they find us?” Isaac demanded.
I turned to Bethany. “I thought we killed these assholes back at the safe house.”
“There are a lot more than three shadowborn in the world,” she replied. “Whoever summoned the others must have summoned more.”
“Great,” I said. “Maybe they got a bulk discount.”
A shadowborn materialized behind Bethany. Before I could shout a warning, it grabbed her.
“Let her go!” I started toward the shadowborn on blind, furious instinct. It raised its katana blade to Bethany’s throat. She flinched, sucking in her breath. The shadowborn shook the sword slightly, but didn’t cut her. I stopped and put up my hands. “Okay, okay, I get it. Nobody moves.”
Across the room, something banged on the closed door that led to the hallway outside, strong enough to rattle the door in its frame.
All I cared about was getting Bethany away from the shadowborn. I didn’t take my eyes off its sword. The edge pressed against her neck, where a film of nervous sweat glistened with each panicked breath she took, but it made no move to slit her throat. For now, at least, the shadowborn was waiting for something.
Another bang shook the door, and another. The second shadowborn materialized in front of the door, and opened it.
A crowd of people spilled into the room like floodwater bursting through a dam. Amid the confusion I smelled the stench of rancid meat. Then I noticed their torn, dirt-smeared clothes and rot-mottled skin. They were dead, all of them. Dead but moving, crowding into the room like an angry mob. A sharp red light glowed inside their pupils. A light I’d seen before.
They were revenants, and there were dozens of them. They smashed the display cases, pulled paintings and artifacts off the walls, knocked over a few of the statues, and sifted through the wreckage. They were looking for something. The box, I figured. Everyone was after that damn thing.
Two revenants came forward and grabbed Isaac. They held his arms behind his back and slipped a heavy chain over his neck. A large iron medallion dangled from it, old and round and carved with weird sigils. Another pair of revenants grabbed Bethany, and the shadowborn who’d been holding her blinked out of sight. Philip and Gabrielle were restrained as well. Everyone had been brought under control but me. For some reason they’d left me alone. Why?
I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around.
Bennett stood behind me, a toothy grin on his pale, dead face. “Surprise.”
A pair of revenants came forward and took me by the arms. They were in bad shape, these two, half-faced corpses that looked like they’d died in a meat grinder. But they were unbelievably strong. I couldn’t move in their grip at all. Up close, the odor of rotting flesh wet from the rain was so strong it made my eyes water.