Shadow Redeemed Read online

  SHADOW REDEEMED

  Shades of Blood Book Three

  Megan Blackwood

  Copyright © 2019 Megan Blackwood

  All rights reserved.

  www.meganblackwood.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder except for brief passages quoted by reviewers or in connection with critical analysis.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover art by Book Covers and Designs by Juan

  Also By Megan Blackwood

  Shades of Blood Series

  Sun Cursed

  Night Blessed

  Shadow Redeemed

  Table of Contents

  Shadows Reach

  One: Ways New and Old

  Two: Secrets in Shadow

  Three: Sampling the Night

  Four: Watch-lights

  Five: Dust and Dreams

  Six: Words Once Lost

  Seven: Hard Truths

  Eight: To Hunt the Shadow

  Nine: Trial of Night

  Ten: The Life of a Flame

  Eleven: Yellow Burns to Orange

  Twelve: Cold, Cold, Fire

  Thirteen: Magic Untold

  Fourteen: And I Shall Lead

  Fifteen: Tip the Scales

  Sixteen: Hunted

  Seventeen: Lines Drawn in Blood and Ash

  Eighteen: Lab Rats

  Nineteen: Wild Flowers

  Twenty: Use the Cat

  Twenty-one: Twisting Paths

  Twenty-two: The Hurt

  Twenty-three: Named in Blood

  Twenty-four: You Are Cordially Invited

  Twenty-five: Favors

  Twenty-six: Invitation Accepted

  Twenty-seven: Old Tricks

  Twenty-eight: The Commander Shall Not

  Twenty-nine: For Want of a Drop

  Thirty: The Balance

  Thirty-one: Everything

  Thirty-two: The Proving Ground

  Thirty-three: The Fixer

  Thirty-four: One Way or Another

  Thirty-five: Luna's Metal

  Thirty-six: Lost in the Balance

  Thirty-seven: The Question Unasked

  We Begin, Again

  Shadows Reach

  The shadows of London lie thick on the pavement. It is not unusual, this time of year, when the nights grow long and the leaves tremble with their own decay, turning the rustle of spring whispers into the death rattle of the coming winter.

  But the mortals notice the stretching dark. And that, well, that is unusual indeed.

  They cannot say what it is, exactly, but ancestral instinct riles their blood. Unsettles them. They clutch their babes a little closer, step the tiniest bit faster to reach the doors of their homes after the sun falls.

  We have failed, my kin and I, though it is on my shoulders the bulk of the blame rests. For though we drove Ragnar to ash and stripped the Venefica from this world, the balance has not settled.

  But the powers of the night are not the only balance that has tipped. With one of my eyes silver, the other gold, my brethren watch me warily, and even I cannot say if their suspicion is uncalled for. Even as Maeve's golden shackles cling to my wrists, restricting the flow of nightwalker power in my blood, my oath to the Sun Guard is a muted, dull thing. A steady thump of drums to remind me of that which I have sworn. But I am so very practiced at forgetting.

  Wary of my allegiance or not, we have no time to rest, to rebuild and recalculate. The tide of Ragnar's leftover ghouls erodes the fragile peace between this world and others, drawing beings darker than my nightwalker counterparts. Beings no knife of this world can cut.

  For as Victoria's Veil lies tattered, and mortals hang garlic from the winter-black boughs, something else has noticed the swell of vampiric strength in this world. Something older than moonlight.

  Pull tight your shutters, humanity. Bolt fast your doors. For I have glimpsed that which dwells in the dark, and even I who hunt the night fear it.

  One: Ways New and Old

  I was halfway through pretending to understand the compulsion of a pumpkin spice latte when I realized I was being watched. Foam and cinnamon sloshed against the sides of the mug as I sat it down on the café table and, pretending to lean back casually, stretched my arms above my head. Nothing about the patio had changed. The patrons chattered, the harried waitress scurried back and forth, the shadows lengthened against the walls as time ticked by. All normal. All expected.

  And yet, an unwelcome gaze tracked me.

  It prickled my skin. And while my every instinct should have called out a warning, something inside me thrilled instead. I had come here to attract another kind of attention, hoping to draw my Lucien out of hiding, but similar attempts in the past had yet to work. I'd been dormant too long, and no one could blame me this time. For this time, trouble had found me.

  I adjusted my sunglasses, making certain they covered my gold-and-silver eyes, then pushed away from the table and stood, tilting my face to the late afternoon light. Winter nipped at the wind, but a break in the clouds had showered this patio with sunlight, which was why I had chosen it to try the pumpkin experiment. The latte had been good, if not nearly so compelling as fresh blood.

  I stepped around a lounging terrier and out onto the sidewalk, rejoining the flow of London traffic. Hands in the pockets of my leather jacket, I rucked up my chunky scarlet scarf against the winter chill—Talia had insisted I at least pretend to be cold in the winter—and strolled at a leisurely pace, following the flow of traffic in the general direction of a shopping center.

  The gaze followed.

  I grinned into my scarf. The golden shackles that bound my wrists tingled, reacting to an instinctive reach for power. Maeve had claimed the sigils she'd enspelled in the metal would only limit my ability to draw upon nightwalker powers, but in practice I found they dampened my sunstrider abilities as well.

  But the sun warmed my back through the leather of my jacket, and its power came to me through the tightened nozzle of the binding, letting me sniff the air with heightened senses. Nothing supernatural lurked nearby. Interesting.

  I'd never considered that a mortal might want to stalk me. The thralls of the nightwalkers, those self-called Daughters of the Moon, had been rehabilitated by Maeve and Emeline. Their memories of the supernatural had been wiped, their only awareness of the monsters in the cracks of the world what they gleaned from the frantic stories of ghouls on the evening news.

  Whether they called it a disease, or whispered on conspiracy forums about the rise of vampirism, the mortals of London had woken up to the monsters in their midst. But that didn't mean that one should be able to pick me out, enjoying a coffee on a patio under the full glare of the sun.

  Maybe the poor fool followed me for banal reasons—mugging, severely misguided sexual advances. But I carried an aura that discouraged such things. No matter how many times a mortal malignant might glance at me, instinct should warn them off. Whisper to them that I was a predator, not prey.

  I turned a corner. Footsteps pattered closer.

  I sniffed again, focusing on those footsteps, resisting an urge to crane my head around to see who followed. Male, no one I knew, but there was something familiar about him. Astringent. Antiseptic, even, over the faint foulness of disease scrubbed away. The man's heart raced. Sweat tinged the air. I stopped halfway down the side street. There was no one else nearby. This would do.

  "Are you going to introduce yourself?" I asked without turning around.

  The footsteps stoppe
d, leather scuffing against pavement.

  "How did you know?"

  "Irrelevant, I think."

  I turned, slowly, keeping my hands in my pockets and my expression neutral. Through the tint of my sunglasses, a man stood ten paces away. He shoved his hands into the pockets of dark grey slacks, jingling the keys in his pocket. A line of stubble peppered his dark chin, chestnut-brown eyes rimmed with bloodshot whites. He'd started out the day with a well-pressed French blue button-up, but now the collar hung limp around his neck, the top button undone and askew.

  Without the white coat, it took me an extra beat to place him. Arun Padhi, the doctor who had tried to quarantine me at Tower Bridge Hospital.

  "Dr. Padhi. Are you still convinced I've been infected with rabies?"

  He snorted and looked at his shoes. "We both know you don't have rabies. For one, you'd be dead by now—unless you have a miraculous immune system." He looked up, brows wrinkling together. "Which I believe you do."

  "But not one that fought off rabies."

  "No."

  I waited, mirroring his posture with my hands in my own pockets. He wouldn't recognize my shackles for what they were, but somehow I didn't want him to see them. They were my shame to bear alone. I would wear them until I could prove to the Sun Guard that some sliver of my oath remained, and the existence of my silver, nightwalker, eye did not make me a threat to humanity.

  "Mrs. Canavan..."

  I laughed, startled by the name—I'd forgotten Seamus's lie to get me through the emergency room. "Magdalene. Magdalene Shelley."

  He nodded. "You didn't look like a Maggie. Or a missus anything, for that matter. Who was the man with you?"

  "Not important to this conversation."

  He inclined his head reluctantly. "Very well. Miss Shelley, I believe you have some knowledge of what's been spreading through London. Am I correct?"

  "You are."

  His eyes fluttered closed for a breath, then snapped open again to regard me with stark intensity. "Then I must beg for your help."

  This should be Emeline's call. I—with my shackles and my trial coming up—did not have the authority to make such decisions. Never mind that Victoria's Veil was in shreds, and nightwalker ghouls roamed the streets of London. Never mind that the news ran constant stories of vampires and beasts, dragging before the camera so-called experts draped in black velvet and dripping silver jewelry. Never mind that the whole city stank of garlic, and grocers were selling what little bulbs they could get in stock for 20 quid a head.

  It wasn't my place to reveal the Sun Guard's secrets. And if anyone needed to follow the rules right now, it was me.

  "Dr. Padhi..."

  "Please." He reached a hand toward me, then stopped himself. "I don't care what you were up to in the hospital that day. I need information. People are dying."

  The remnant drumbeat of my oath beat louder, a sliver of guilt worming its way into my heart. It was my job, my duty, to protect humanity. Assisting this doctor, even if it was against the letter of the guard's law, might just save lives. Wasn't that what I was meant to do? Or was that my silver eye, urging me to reveal the guard's secrets to some stranger? I had only his word that he meant well. His word and my instinct, treacherous as it was.

  I sighed. "It may be best if I..."

  Footsteps rounded the corner. I stepped back, moving into a ray of light that speared down from the narrow space between the awnings. Padhi sought the cover of the shadows. Darkness clung to his face, carving out the hollows in his cheeks. The thickness unsettled me. It seemed deeper than a daylight shadow had any right to be.

  "Doctor," I said and grabbed his arm, pulling him into the light.

  A man whose pale cheeks were red with sunburn rounded the corner, then drew back in surprise. He shrugged and continued on his way, ducking his head down as he skirted around us. Some deep-bred British instinct to put as much distance between oneself and strangers without being rude drove the man into the shadows.

  A shout of warning pushed against my lips but then, what was I meant to say? Get away from there, it's too dark? The man turned his head, sensing the building pressure in me—some animal instinct warning him that not all was right. His eyes narrowed, hands digging deeper into his pockets as he gripped his wallet hidden there.

  He sped up, fear propelling him out of the strangeness I'd felt. A breath seeped from between my lips as he stepped out of the dark, his steps faster now that my presence had spooked him.

  He didn't get very far.

  Darkness congealed around the man's ankle, licking up his slacks like a flame, consuming flesh and fabric in the space of an instant. The man's eyes bulged, the whites glinting in the sunlight he'd almost reached, body shuddering as the shadow clawed higher, flowed around him like the deepest waters of the ocean and with a pop that stung my ears the man was gone.

  And the dark was not yet done. It twisted, curling back on itself, and reached for Padhi. The doctor froze, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. The shadow slipped over his shoes, crawled up his legs, tendrils of void drawing root-like patterns against his slacks. Padhi turned his back to me, knees bending as he struggled to flee.

  Enough. I'd been too slow before, but this time I was ready. I drew power from the overcast sun, shuddering from the effort as I struggled to force the power through my veins against the regulation of the shackles. Light burst from my palms, shattered the too-thick darkness.

  My ears buzzed as the shadows rolled back, retreating from Padhi until they lay thin and normal once more. I pressed my palms against my thighs, trying to control my breathing.

  "What the hell..." Padhi shoved his hands into the now-normal as if he could reach into the dark and pull the man back out. I grabbed him by his collar and yanked him away.

  "He's gone. Don't get too close, you don't want to lure that thing back and have it finish what it started with you."

  "That thing?" He staggered under the force of my pull. "What in the... What was that? You know, don't you?"

  He shook my hand off and turned on me, keeping a wary distance between himself and the shadows even as he backed away. Denial came fast to my lips—how could I know such a thing?—but I swallowed back the protest. I had known, hadn't I, that something was wrong with those shadows when Padhi first stepped into them?

  I hadn't recognized the flavor of that darkness right away, but I recognized it now. The same void that I had traveled through with Lucien—that endless mind that lurked in the space between moon and sun, the darkness neither light could reach. An anathema to all life, even the walking dead like nightwalker and sunstrider.

  "I'm not sure."

  Not a lie, but not the whole truth either. He glared at me, sensing the deceit, but needing the knowledge I carried so badly that he braced himself as if for battle. "We must help that man."

  "We cannot. Not now." Maybe Lucien could... But, no. He'd gone into hiding, keeping himself clear of the power void left by Ragnar's death. Even if I could find him and force him to drag me back into that in-between place, the man was already dead.

  "Come with me," I said, extending my hand to Padhi. "We must talk somewhere more secure. It's not safe here."

  He eyed me warily, then took my hand.

  Two: Secrets in Shadow

  Dr. Padhi's gaze was drawn to the high vault of the ceiling as we entered the Durfort-Civrac estate. Builders had put things back as they had been before Ragnar's people had invaded. The smooth plaster and carved wooden banister of the great staircase looked just a touch too new—too pristine—to be convincing.

  The blood stains may have been scrubbed clean, but this place would always feel like death. For a creature whose existence was steeped in the mortuary, the estate made me feel the grave dirt that had once been heaped upon my back.

  "What is this place?" Padhi asked.

  "The temporary headquarters of the Sun Guard."

  "The what?"

  I gave him a sly look. "That's what you're here to learn,
doctor."

  He puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. "Then tell me, please. I've come here with you without asking questions, at your request. Now that I'm here I think I deserve a little information."

  "I've brought you here to learn from the one authorized to tell you such things."

  I clenched my fists in the hidden place of my pockets, wanting nothing more than to tell Padhi everything he needed to know, but held back by the metal circling my wrists.

  The bracelets did not hold my tongue in the same way they held my powers, but they reminded me of all the lines I had already crossed. And the fact that I must prove to myself, if not to the others, that I could make decisions in line with my order's goals even if the leash of my oath had dwindled to the steady beat of drums. A rhythm I could ignore.

  "Magdalene," a man said. I lifted my head and found Julian coming down the grand sweep of stairs toward us. Before I could think, I stepped in front of Padhi. Not quite covering him, but angling my body so that if Julian were to close that distance he'd have to go through me.

  The young, lanky sunstrider stopped on the stairs, one hand on the rail, his narrow features pulled back in suspicion.

  "Who is that?" Julian's fingers curled on the rail as if they were ready to spring into claws. The motion was too fast for Padhi to follow, but Julian sniffed the air—checking to see if he were nightwalker, no doubt. I enjoyed disappointing him.

  "This is Dr. Arun Padhi. I've brought him to see Emeline."

  I inclined my head to the doctor and strode toward the stairs. Some instinct in the doctor's bones urged him to stay behind me as we drew up the stairs near to where Julian hovered.

  He put his hand on my arm as I passed. I stopped, our faces side by side, a low thrum of anger tensioning my muscles as the natural hierarchy of things was disturbed. I may have been on probation, but I was still Julian's elder. I had not given him permission to touch me.

  "May I help you, Julian?" I asked with all the saccharine politeness I could muster. His lips curled back, revealing the faint point of distended fangs. Padhi sucked in a startled breath. Idiot pup of a sunstrider.