Page 4 of Shadowlands Omega

He launches himself off of the edge of the cart and Audet is slow to follow. I start, jerk, jump off the end of the wagon…only for my slipper to get tangled in a jagged piece of worn wood. I windmill my arms and flail wildly, but neither action saves me from hitting the packed dirt and cobblestone road. I groan, my chest blazes, I’m out of breath. But I don’t have time to categorize my injuries. Cyprus’s hand is on my upper arm and he’s yanking me onto my feet, and together we run back towards the kitchens.

“Cyprus, what the fuck are you on about?” Audet shouts, panting as she appears at his side. I didn’t realize until now that I’m being carried. My own legs are jelly, hardly helping Cyprus at all. “We’re going to be late with dinner and now poor Kandia is going to need to go to the doctor!” See? She does love me. I smile. She’s rare to show it. “You know she’s not a runner and about as elegant as a horse in high heels.” Whatever. It’s still love. I’m taking it.

“There are horses coming!” Cyprus shouts, sounding out of breath himself and he’s always been fit. We reach the kitchens in record time and Cyprus tosses me in the garden bed amid a pile of carrot tops so that he can alert everyone inside the main kitchens. I scrabble up to my feet and run around to the back of the kitchens, our home. I bang on the rough, wooden exteriors of the now locked cellar doors. “Mama! Papa! We’ve got trouble!”

The doors explode open and I canter back, losing my footing and falling ass first into the squash patch. The blonde woman and a whole host of Betas I don’t recognize emerge, all of them wearing the same dreary rags she is. All of them wearing guns. The blonde one who appears to be their leader swivels her weapon around then, and seeing me, drops her goggles from her forehead to cover her eyes.

“Lou,” she barks, then quickly rattles off a couple other names. Her eyes settle on mine. “What the fuck did you do?” She turns her gun on me and I raise my hands, voice caught in my throat as I prepare a weak defense. Because I don’t know what I did. I don’t have a fucking clue what’s happening.

My parents emerge from the cellar and my dad, seeing the female with her hand on the trigger, hisses, “Merlin, lower your weapon. She’s done nothing. She knows nothing.”

“Then why thefuckdo I hear horses on the wind?” They’re louder now. I can hear them too, the clop of many hooves sounding like thunder on the breeze. Against the silence of the village, that sound is deafening.

Threatening.

A beat passes. I can see the female called Merlin debate whether or not to kill me. Several other Betas emerge around her and one of them says something in her ear in tones too low for me to catch. Finally, at his words, she calls out, “Juliette, Oscar, Angel — with me and Lou. Rendezvous point L. The rest of you head to Q with the cargo.”

Betas emerge from the cellar carrying dead bodies between them. The older male I saw before, the younger female, another female, two more males. One of the dead is a brown-skinned man that I do recognize from the Undoline markets. He was an Alpha who used to sell precious metals for jewelry smelting. What is he doing here? How did he die? I can’t see any indications of what would have killed him. There are bruises around his neck and violent autopsy stitching across his abdomen and chest, which appears in grim clarity every time the rough woven cloth wrapped around him flaps up. He’s not well wrapped. Not at all. Nothing about the wound or the bruises or the stitching or the way he’s wrapped suggest he’s been handled at all with care.

My lower lip trembles. I feel heat prick the backs of my eyes. Who did this to him? Why? And where are they taking him now? The Betas have turned towards the woods and are moving at speed, hauling the bodies between them. My father stands at Merlin’s arm. He doesn’t touch her, but he stands close. He speaks quietly, words directed to me though he never takes his eyes off of her.

“Come on now, Kandia. Let’s get to the church,” my father holds out his hand. I slowly, carefully reach for it.

“Merlin!” A voice shouts from the hill. They’re headed north, yes, but not towards the highway line. No, these Betas look like theywantto reach Paradise Hole’s creepy, encroaching woods.

The woman in front of me rips her gun up away from me and I feel like a foot’s just been lifted from my chest. I gasp in a breath. She winks down at me. “You look familiar,” she says. “And I have a feeling we might be seeing each other again.” She turns and flees.

My father grabs me by the shoulder of my dress. “Come quickly now, Kia!” He wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing blood there too, and glances around. “Where’s Audet?”

I just shake my head.

“Fuck.” He curses. I’ve never heard him curse. And suddenly he’s grabbing my arms, hauling me forward and we’re hurrying around the kitchens to the road out front.

There are suddenly so many of us running together, at least forty of us, everyone from the kitchens and many who don’t work in the kitchens full time or ever. Some are people I saw with my parents in that basement, their clothes dotted in blood and what looks like black ink, all of them Betas. Half of the sprinters are screaming and panicking, the other half of us don’t have any idea what’s going on. All I know is that if my father’s hand hadn’t been on my arm, I’d have been trampled. Not just by my own family, either, but by the horses whose hooves are eating up the ground between us. They’re gaining on us.

“Everyone, seek sanctuary in the church!” It’s my auntie Mae who shouts that. She’s up ahead with my mama, who’s somehow leading the pack, running despite her heft. She has a thick build that’s prized in the Shadowlands, sure, but especially in our village. It’s a build I don’t share, not that that helps me run any better.

I go flying as soon as we hit the church’s short steps, my feet snagging on themselves, maybe on the worn, wooden floorboards. I’m missing a slipper, I realize with dismay and distress. I have the urge to go back for it, but I can’t because I’m falling. The force of the fall propels me out of my papa’s grip. The legs of a dozen people crowd my vision as they veer around me. Owenna’s among the last to make it into the church at my back. She’s shouting my name, shouting at me to move, but I can’t even begin to obey her. Not when the entirety of my concentration has been subsumed by the vision that exists past her, on the highway line. At that vision, all other sounds become muted, distant thumps like the screams of a prisoner trapped behind thick glass, their fists banging for release.

He’s here…

Orias Village sits in the valley of a hill. The kitchens sit at its farthest edge, closest to the crossing of the highway lines and closest to Paradise Hole. But south, on the other side of the hill’s next crest is Shadow Keep. That is where Lord Yaron lives and administers justice. That is where he trains his Crimson Riders, the death dealers of the Shadowlands, the feared and the revered. I’ve seen them in passing many times, their dark, deep crimson cloaks flapping in the wind, and as a child I always held them in awe. But I’ve never seen them gathered en masse, out for blood and war.

And right now, they’re headed straight for us like an arrowhead, and at its tip, Lord Yaron.TheLord Yaron. His black cloak sails out from his back, the blade and handle of his axe visible because he grips it, pointing it at us with violence. I’ve never seen him battle ready before. I’d love to draw it. I will later. Because right now, he’s out for blood. Ours.

“He’s here,” I whisper.

“Kia, get up!” Hands are on me, no longer my father’s but my brother’s again. He drags me deeper into the church and the scent of rich cherrywood overwhelms me. I’ve smelled this church a few times before — in my childhood the scent’s familiarity always brought comfort but over the years, I started coming to church less and less. I didn’t expect my first visit in years to be under these circumstances.

Back at the door, my father and Tor lift the Shadowlands sigil from its flag post near the pulpit and slide it between the door handles. Standing on a raised pulpit in the apse, Owenna shouts orders to secure the windows. I don’t move, though. I can’t. I’m stuck in between two pews, looking up towards the rafters at the painted faces of the many Orias ancestors that we worship.

And then Justine screams and Farro shouts across the chaos, “They have oil! I can smell it!”

“They mean to burn us inside!” my mama screams. “Everybody out!”

Screams rise up and I look around at all these people, my boisterous and wonderful family, in a daze. Tor and my brother are trying to remove the barricade they just erected and throw the front doors open. An arrow, as thick as I’ve ever seen, greets them and I blink and have the most horrible thought that’s ever come to me. I pray that it hits Tor and not Cyprus. Anybody but my twin.

The arrow, as thick as a thumb, pierces Tor’s chest, right in the center. It drives deep, hitting him with force enough to throw him off of his feet. He canters back, the people between us unable to catch him. He stumbles directly into me. I open my arms, but I’m too weak to do anything but collapse uselessly underneath his weight.

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