Through my eyelids I noticed the light change, dimming from bright white to a pale, rosy red. I heard chunks of wood break away from the door but I didn’t dare open my eyes to see what was happening. “Bethany, hurry!”
Something shoved the dresser hard, knocking it away from the door. It tumbled forward, taking me with it. When I hit the floor, I rolled away to keep the dresser from landing on top of me. “Bethany!” I couldn’t keep my eyes closed anymore, not if the shadowborn had gotten through. I opened my eyes, and just then the screaming in my ear stopped, the bright light went away, and the dizziness passed. Bethany had closed the charm again, I saw, only now the nail was driven through its center.
Portions of the door splintered and broke as the shadowborn punched and kicked their way through. A moment later, the door came out of its frame and toppled to the floor. Thornton backed away with his hackles up, a long, low growl emanating from his throat. I ran for my sword and picked it up off the floor.
Bethany bit one end off the altered charm and spat it onto the floor. Then she held the charm out in front of her like a weapon, aiming it at the shadowborn in the doorway. “The good thing about nails,” she said, “is that they’re not just the perfect talismans for containment spells. They also make damn good triggers.” She pressed the nail’s head with her thumb. A shower of dim, rosy sparks sputtered from the open end of the charm—
And then nothing.
The color drained Bethany’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re dead.”
Eighteen
In a blink, the shadowborn were gone, and just as quickly, they appeared directly in front of us. They lifted their swords, ready to strike. On instinct I pushed Bethany behind me, and accidentally touched the retooled charm she was still holding. A blast of light—a fuller, darker red this time—erupted from the end of the charm and filled the whole room, tinting everything crimson. When I yanked my hand back, the blast faded.
The shadowborn retreated, reeling and swaying as if they were dizzy. Somehow, I’d done this. I looked at my hand in shock.
Bethany stared at me. “How did you…?”
There was no time to figure it out. The shadowborn were already recovering. But had the containment spell worked? There was only one way to find out. I kicked the wooden idol off the floor and watched it sail toward them. The shadowborn, used to phasing out of the material plane whenever they felt threatened, didn’t bother moving out of the way. They tried to phase instead. The idol thumped against the chest of the closest shadowborn, then fell to the floor. In unison, the three of them looked down at it, then back up at me. Alarmed, they backed away from us and grouped together by the door, holding their katanas up defensively.
“It worked!” Bethany cried, laughing with relief. “It actually worked! They can’t phase anymore!”
“Great,” I said. “Now all we have to do is not get killed.”
Bethany pocketed the charm and grabbed her sword off the floor. “Go for their heads,” she said. “I don’t know if it will kill them, but it’s our best bet to keep them from coming after us. Thornton, you take the one on the left. Trent, the right. I’ll take the one in the mid—”
Before she finished, Thornton sprang at the shadowborn. He bowled right through them, knocking them back onto the hallway floor outside.
“That works, too,” Bethany said.
Without their ability to phase, the shadowborn were clumsy and disoriented, trying to untangle from each other and get back on their feet. Thornton didn’t give them a chance to recover. He latched his strong, lupine jaws around one shadowborn’s neck and dragged him off down the hallway.
Bethany and I charged at the remaining two while they were still down. I drove my sword straight into the first shadowborn’s chest, but my excitement at landing a blow was short lived. The shadowborn were immortal, in their own way. A sword through the chest wasn’t much more than a mild annoyance to them. Still, this one fixated on the sword piercing its chest for a moment. It had probably been centuries since the undead assassin felt anything like fear. I hoped it was feeling it now.
I pulled my sword out. The shadowborn leaped to its feet. It held its katana in front of it and backed down the hall toward Ingrid’s bedroom. It knew it no longer had the advantage.
I spun, eyeing the staircase at the far end of the hallway. On the landing, Thornton still had his jaws around his shadowborn’s neck. Then his jaws closed with a loud, grisly snap. The shadowborn went slack as its head rolled away from its body and bounced down the steps.
Bethany bumped me as she ran past, heading for the stairs. Smart woman.
I followed her, glancing quickly over my shoulder. The second shadowborn was sprinting like a flash behind us. In a single smooth, quick motion, it jumped, somersaulting through the air, and landed gracefully on its feet halfway down the stairs. It started climbing toward us. Bethany and I backed away. Thornton stood his ground, snarling.
I looked around frantically, searching for another way out, but all there was on the third floor were bedrooms. At the far end of the hall, the first shadowborn edged toward us. Shit. The stairs were the only way down, and trying to fight past the shadowborn on a narrow staircase would be suicide. So would staying put, but with one shadowborn coming up the stairs and another approaching from the opposite end of the hall, we were penned in. Then I saw the roof access ladder in the corner of the landing.
It was our only chance. I ran for the ladder and started climbing. Bethany and Thornton guarded the ladder, her sword raised, his teeth bared, ready to fend off the two remaining shadowborn and give me enough time to get the trapdoor to the roof open.
The trapdoor was secured with a simple sliding lock. I slid the small metal bar back from its housing, then shoved the trapdoor open. Bright morning sunlight poured in from above. I pulled myself up onto the tar and cement surface of the roof.
Bethany started up the ladder next, climbing fast. As soon as she was high enough, I grabbed her wrist and quickly pulled her the rest of the way up. When she was safely on the roof, I looked down through the opening again. Thornton was still on the floor below, snarling at the shadowborn. They were keeping their distance from him for now, but they wouldn’t for much longer.
“Thornton, come on!” I called, though I wondered how he was going to join us on the roof. A wolf couldn’t exactly climb a ladder, and Thornton wouldn’t risk changing back to his human form while the shadowborn had him surrounded.
In a moment, I had my answer. With a mighty leap, Thornton was halfway through the trapdoor, his front paws on the roof, his hind legs dangling below him. He pushed and scrabbled against the ladder until he was all the way through. Below, the shadowborn gathered at the base of the ladder and looked up with their featureless steel masks. I kicked the trapdoor closed. It didn’t lock from the outside, which meant it couldn’t keep the shadowborn from following us, but hopefully it would buy us a few extra seconds.
I glanced around, trying to get my bearings. A cement wall as high as my knee traced the perimeter of the roof, separating it from the roofs of the neighboring town houses. It also fenced off the steep drop to the street at the front of the building. I moved to the back and saw an interior courtyard below, walled in by the backs of the buildings that abutted it. There was no fire escape, and despite the heaps of big black trash bags and bundled cardboard along the walls, the courtyard was definitely too far down to jump safely.
Bethany was breathing hard, still catching her breath. She had a cut on her cheek from a shadowborn’s sword. “What happened down there? How did you get the charm to do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said tersely. I scanned the rooftops for the fastest way to get back to the street.
Bethany grabbed my arm and looked at me angrily. “Well, you better start figuring it out. A displacer can only move one person at a time. Reverse it to a containment spell and the same principle should apply, only when you touched it the spell was a hell of a lot stronger than it should have been. It affected
Through the closed trapdoor came the sounds of the shadowborn climbing the ladder. “They’re coming. We
