Page 15 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 2

“Gotcha,” I murmured to myself as I slid open the drawer. Inside, nestled on a small cushion, was the shape that had haunted my dreams for the past week, all the rare times I’d managed to sleep long enough to dream.

The knife was shaped like a fat crescent moon. The handle rose up from the center of the arc cut into the blade, but the whole thing looked to be made of one piece of metal. It was coppery, and the blade still had a few tiny flecks of my dried blood on it. It was small. From point to point, the thing was maybe three inches across, the handle barely bigger than my thumb. There was a hole through the end of the handle, perfectly round and smooth. I’d seen blades in the same shape before, probably at one of the history museums Marcus and I had gone to on work trips. Usually, knives shaped like that were used for thinning out leather. Stripping away layers of it to make it easier to bend into shape. This blade was different from them only because of a technicality. It didn’t make leather easier to bend to your will, just people.

I shook myself. The sleep debt I’d accumulated was bad enough that I was getting all poetic, which was always a bad sign. I snapped on a pair of gloves and picked up the knife. The curse twisted happily inside of me like a cat in a sunbeam. It was eager. The curse-scar on my chest pulsed with an eager, needy feeling. If I just held the knife a little closer…

I shuddered and stuffed the thing into the enchanted evidence bag I’d brought in my fanny pack. As soon as the bag was closed around it, the urge disappeared. I felt dirty, tainted, like I needed a shower.

I peeked out of the vault, checking the hallway. I’d managed to avoid setting off any alarms, so if I could wipe that guard’s memory of ever seeing me, I could get away quickly and cleanly. All I had to do was get to the roof without drawing any attention, where Damien’s contact was meeting me.

Of course, as soon as I thought that, an alarm sounded nearby.

“Fuck’s sake,” I muttered. Down the hall, shoes squeaked, people running from the guard station toward the disruption. Based on Gabriel’s map, that would bring them right past the guard I’d knocked out.

Sure enough, a handful of uniformed vampires skidded around the corner. I heard a shout as they spotted their unconscious colleague.

Okay. So, quick and clean was off the table.

I ducked back into the vault, pushing the door closed behind me, then cracked my neck and stretched out my hands. Time to have a little fun. I hadn’t had much time to get a sense of my new power, but I could guess as to what I might be capable of. I threw a bolt of raw magic upward, fast and hard. There was a roar and a crash, then a shower of dust, stone, and twisted metal crumbled down onto the floor. Some of it bounced off the shield I’d thrown up around myself, a small dome of force that flashed gold whenever something hit it. I looked up.

The blast had blown straight through the ceiling, which I’d expected. What I hadn’t expected was for it to tear through the three floors above. I grinned so widely, my cheeks hurt. Maybe having an insane amount of magical power was something I could get used to after all.

I twisted tendrils of magic out of the air and flung them up to the edge of the hole on the top floor. They grabbed on tightly, and I pulled, sending myself flying upward. I caught brief glimpses of the rooms as I zoomed through them, just enough to get an impression of dark, ornate offices, and a glossy bathroom. Then I was on the ground again, catching myself on the half-crumbled floor next to the hole. I felt like a goddamn superhero.

Alarms blared all around, and I could only hope that it was Gabriel, Marcus, and Isabella causing the planned distraction and not anything worse. They’d get out easily. Gabriel knew the place like the back of his hand, and he could pull rank on the guards.

I glanced around, trying to get my bearings. The large, half-circle room looked like it was set up for meetings. I sprinted for the door, running until I found a stairwell. Now it was just a question of getting up as fast as possible. Curling thick vines of magic around the stair rails, I yanked myself up the center between the flights of stairs.

The rendezvous spot was a patch of roof between three of the turrets, a triangle with two sides tucked against the citadel and the other facing out over the city. All three towers had entrances onto the roof, making it the ideal spot to meet up if you didn’t know which path you’d be taking. I slammed open the door to the roof. At some point, the door had been replaced with a metal fireproof one, with a bright red EXIT sign above it. Good to know that even powerful vampires had to abide by fire code.

It was fully dark out now, and this high up, the wind was bitingly cold. Light poured from the open door onto the balcony. The first thing I noticed was the view of the city sprawled out below. It was beautiful, even with too many of the lights left dark, and looked somehow fragile, like a model that could be crushed by a clumsy hand.

The second thing I noticed was the man waiting in the shadows. He was broad and beefy, with a generous gut he wasn’t dressing to hide. In the light from the stairwell, I could see that he had red hair streaked with white at the temples, and a neat beard.

“Good, you’re here,” he said. “I heard the alarms. Everything all right?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I told him. “Hopefully, it’s just a distraction, but…” I shut the door behind me, leaving us in the gloom. It took a second for my eyes to adjust. With so much of Eldoria dark, the stars were so much clearer. “Have you seen the others leave?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have eyes on the front door. We need to go.”

“We should make sure they’re out first.”

“We don’t have time,” he insisted. “We need to get you and that knife away from here as soon as we can.”

I desperately wanted to argue, but he was right. “Fuck,” I grumbled. “All right, so what’s the plan?”

The man knelt and patted his own broad shoulders. “Hop on,” he said. I stared at him, and he grinned. “Damien didn’t tell you about this part, did he?”

“He did not,” I said. “Fuck’s sake.” I didn’t have a ton of other options, so I climbed onto his shoulders. He stood easily, like he didn’t even notice my weight, steadying me with his hands on my knees.

“Oh,” he said suddenly, lifting a hand and craning his neck to look at me. “Xarek.”

“Evangeline,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Evangeline,” he said cheerfully. “Hold on tight!”

Xarek ran for the edge of the roof and vaulted over the railing. I shrieked—we were so fucking high up—and closed my eyes tightly, feeling the wind whip past and sting my face. Suddenly, the wind stopped, and I heard a noise like tearing silk. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself sitting on the back of a huge copper dragon, its—his—massive wings splayed out on either side of me to catch the air. I grabbed onto his neck, a densely muscled thing maybe a yard in diameter covered in scales the size of my palm. I whooped and held on tighter.

Xarek flapped his wings a few times, taking us higher in the sky. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before, all that strength channeled into such precisely controlled movements. Even though we were hundreds of feet up in the air, I felt surprisingly safe.

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