Shadowlark

the magic out of the machines and into himself, gathering for another strike.

Tansy’s death wasn’t enough for him.

When it came, I didn’t have time to throw up my shields. The blast hit me off-center, in the arm, throwing one shoulder back. Something cracked, sending pain shooting up my arm as it fell to dangle uselessly at my side.

I don’t need hands to kill you. I gritted my teeth, sucking air through my nose, trying to focus on Wesley’s meditation exercises. Pain is nothing. Pain’s just in my mind. But as I started to get some focus together another blast came, this one knocking me back against the wall, hitting me squarely in the stomach and dropping me to my knees.

Where were Oren, Nix, Basil? I couldn’t see—through the grating, on my hands and knees, I could only see bodies everywhere. The smell of burning flesh and hair and chemicals singed my nostrils, and something dripped down my back—sweat or blood, I couldn’t tell.

I was alone. And I had only one more trick to try.

I pulled myself up with my one good arm, choking back a groan of pain as a wave of nausea rolled over me. I tried to reach into my pocket but found that my fingers were burned, too swollen to fit inside it. I couldn’t get at the device. Another bolt came at me, hitting the railing of the catwalk instead and blasting it into in a million white-hot shards that stung me all over my face and throat.

I stood up, and my eyes found Oren. He was lying facedown, but as I watched he picked himself up on his arms, his gaze sweeping the catwalk and then resting on me. For a moment I just looked at him, thinking of all the things I should have said before we left.

No regrets, Olivia had said to me. I gazed at Oren, willing him to understand. I took a deep breath.

Somehow Oren sensed what I was about to do a fraction of a second before I moved.

“Lark—NO!”

But I was already running, aiming for the gap in the railing—I jumped—and then I was falling.

One good impact will set it off.

My instincts tried to kick in, tried to form the same sort of magical cushion that had saved me twice before. I fought them tooth and nail, trying desperately to override my body’s natural desire to save itself.

And then I hit.

The world exploded. Adjutant screamed, and for a moment there was only a column of fire burning purple and gold, and his screams turned hoarse and raspy and then melted away into silence—and then everything was gone.

CHAPTER 28

“Don’t move her—don’t touch her!”

“Oh god, is she—please—”

“I don’t know. Move back, I said!”

“It’s coming this way—I don’t think Curio can hold it.” Snarling, screaming, flashes of light and dark. “You’ve got to get her up—I can’t do it, I have to be touching things and if I get close enough it’ll tear me apart.”

“Lark.” A voice breathed into my ear. “Lark you have to wake up.”

No. Leave me alone. I’m dead, let me stay that way.

“Oren’s going to kill us all, or we’re going to have to kill him. You have to stop him.”

Oren? But Oren was safe. Oren was human.

“I know it hurts. I know it hurts more than anything’s ever hurt before. But Lark, I know you’re in there, and you have to open your eyes.”

Suddenly everything did hurt. And with that pain came the realization that I wasn’t dead—but I wished I was. Agony split me starting from my arm, which I couldn’t move, and radiating throughout my body. I couldn’t feel my toes, my legs wouldn’t respond to my commands. My eyes opened to darkness broken only by flashes of magic. I screamed.

“There’s my girl.” It was Wesley. “Breathe. Just breathe.” His voice was tense with something I couldn’t recognize, but his hands were gentle, one resting against my cheek, the other against the shoulder less torn with agony than the other.

“Oren,” I groaned. “Oren?”

“The blackout device turned him,” said Wesley. “They’re trying to hold him off, but he’s too fast. The device stripped the magic out of the air and out of everyone else—we need you to stop him.”

I tried to find the magic within myself but there was nothing. The blackout device, Parker said, attacked unnatural magic. Magic stolen, magic installed—magic given. That’s why Oren had turned into a shadow. That’s why everything I had was gone.

“No—can’t.” I tried to move and screamed again, the sound tearing itself out of me before my overloaded mind could even register the pain. “Nothing left.”

As if my scream had summoned him, the monster that was Oren burst free of the Renewables trying to fight him and came at us, snarling. I couldn’t even scramble back, my body too broken to listen to my mind’s commands. The Orenshadow snapped its jaws a few inches from my face, hungry and desperate.

I closed my eyes. My only regret was that when this was over, they’d know what he was. They’d make him leave this place that had become home. He’d be alone. I waited for the blow, hoping that he’d kill me quickly, without more pain.

But it never came. I opened my eyes to find the monster inches away, the white eyes locked on mine, teeth bared in a snarl. It growled with each breath in and out as it stared at me, motionless. My good arm twitched and the monster growled—I fell still. No sudden movements.

The only other time I’d been so close to the creature was in the alleyway in the ruins Above, where the monster hesitated. But that was because my magic was working on it, turning it back into Oren. I had no magic now, nothing to bring Oren back into himself.

And yet, I was still alive. And he was still a shadow.

“Take my power.” Wesley shifted slowly, achingly slowly, so that both of his hands were touching my skin, one on my face and one on my neck. “Do it. Now.”

I wanted to protest, but the dark thing inside me had sensed his magic. It wanted him, the hunger rising so swiftly and violently that it shoved everything else aside, all conscience, all pain. I was the shadow, I was the darkness. And here was my salvation.

I pulled at the magic with all my strength, hungry, feasting. The Oren-monster howled, and I wanted to howl with him—the magic was life and death and everything in between, and it was mine.

Dimly I heard Wesley screaming, trying to pull his hands away, but I held him motionless with a single thought. The air stank of fear, and the shadow inside delighted. I felt his heartbeat slow as the magic left him, felt his lungs struggle to rise just one more time. I watched with my true eyesight as the reserve of warm, heady magic inside him dwindled and faded, leaving an increasingly empty, black void.

Like Tansy.

I jerked, shoving Wesley away. The pain as I tried to move my shattered arm knocked me back into myself. I gasped, tasting blood. The lights had gone out while I drained Wesley—but I knew the Oren-monster was still there, snapping at me when I forced myself to sit up. His teeth closed on empty space—it was a warning, not an attack. I reached out with my other sight, feeling for the dark, empty pit in front of me that would be Oren. I eased out with my magic, trying to force it into the air faster. Willing him to change.

Abruptly the snarling stopped. Something moaned in the darkness—Wesley or Oren, I didn’t know. And then, silence.

I lay there, gasping, eyesight sparking, trying to make sense of the blackness. I was afraid to look around with my other sight again, for fear the temptation to attack the Renewables would be too strong.