Author: Heather Marie Adkins
Category: Literature
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/heather-marie-adkins/page,2,478501-relics_and_s_anthology.html
Faltering protection. Thirty years ago, the Hollow had stretched this far and then some. Now, Acura's negative energy felt way too close to home. Senka’s good energy was fading, allowing the darkness in. The Reins, our leaders, had no answers.
I cut the engine and coasted to a stop. The familiar rock cliff jutted from the landscape ahead: a rusty, broken mesa that rose from the desert floor as if from the gaping maw of a giant. The shadow-touched made camp near the mesa, using the abandoned cliff dwellings as lodging. For the most part, they caused little problem for the Hollow. Most of them never ventured even a mile within the city in the short time it took for the darkness to swallow them. So the Rein and Reina left them alone.
Sometimes, however, the shadow-touched did come too close. One wrong move, and they were marked for a visit by someone like me.
I dismounted and checked my gun. The Taurus lived in a thigh holster within easy reach of my left hand. My machete rested in a sleek sheath along my back, though I rarely had need of the knife when I had the firepower.
Hopefully, neither would have reason to be un-holstered during this apprehension.
My track record suggested otherwise, however. The downside of being the Reina’s most trusted hunter, unafraid to get her hands dirty in the name of the Hollow.
The late-October sun had already begun to set. I was hell on timing; it was gonna get real cold, real quick now. Already, I could see the fires being stoked near the mesa. The shadow-touched would be lighting joints and taking pulls from aged bottles of Jack Daniels to prepare for another chilly night in the desert.
Other than smoke a lot, drink a lot, and fuck everybody around, I had no idea what these losers did with their time. They were lucky the Reina’s compassion extended this far.
I keyed up the screen on my Comwatch and glanced over the picture of Georgina Lewis one more time. Petite, pretty, honey-blonde hair, and sapphire eyes. She was light to my dark; funny, considering she was the one shadow-touched.
I killed the screen and approached the mesa.
It didn’t take me long to spot Georgie, her golden hair glowing by the fire inside an open barrel. She clutched a bottle of clear liquid in one hand, her eyes closed as she swayed to someone’s gentle guitar melody. She sat with two other equally pretty girls, and it baffled me to see them there: so clean, so healthy, so vibrant. They’d only just arrived, I’d bet. The shadows hadn’t had a chance yet to take them completely.
They would, though. The darkness always won.
Lucky for me, the crowd was thin – maybe due to the cold, maybe due to the influx of misbehaving shadow-touched and an equal influx of apprehensions from my team. I tried to not think of the people I’d handed over for execution, or the people I’d willingly executed with my own weapons.
Life is different on this side of time in the Hollow, I reminded myself.
I stepped into the warmth coming from the fire and remained silent for a long moment, watching Georgie sway. When she finally opened her bloodshot eyes, I stood less than two feet away, a hand resting benignly on my gun.
“Georgina Lewis?” I asked in the voice my twin brother had dubbed Executioner. “My name is Maurelle Nez. I’m an agent with the Senka Enforcement Bureau. Can we speak privately?”
Georgie’s two companions went still beside her, their eyes wide as saucers.
For a brief moment, I thought Georgie would relent. I thought I saw resignation in her pretty gaze. Thank Senka, no fight this time. No fleeing. No unnecessary bloodshed.
And then the bitch threw the bottle at my face.
Senka-damned preternatural reflexes, and the heavy glass still swiped me. Sharp pain exploded in my temple as the bottle flew past; sour-smelling alcohol splashed over my shirt and jeans.
Even as the pain registered, I reached for my gun again.
Georgie took off.
“Georgie, no!” one of her companions screamed, her slurred voice an inhuman cry in the night.
“Interfere and sign your own death warrants,” I snarled, and followed after my fugitive.
For all her bravery – or her foolishness – in attempting to get away, Georgie turned out to be dumb as a box of rocks. Instead of sprinting for the desert and a wide-open space to run, she darted into an open door in the cliff dwellings.
I’d already concluded she was new to the camp, and my gut didn’t usually steer me wrong. Which meant inside the pueblo, I’d have the advantage: I’d explored this system of interlocking cave dwellings throughout my childhood, before the range of Senka’s protection began to fail and it became off-limits. The place dead-ended. I suppose if she knew she couldn’t outrun a cop, maybe she thought she could hide, instead.
Please. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’m not human, either.
I followed her into the caves. My boots thudded heavily on the packed-dirt floors, punctuated by the stumbling-scuffle of her half-drunk sneakers ahead of me.
We bolted through rooms lit by candles, and then through rooms so dark I couldn’t see my hands in front of me. The passage of light followed by dark was disorienting – and if it faltered my steps, it would cause Georgie to slip up eventually.
She dashed into a long, rectangular hut of cavernous black doors, and I knew the jig was up. This was the longhouse at the back of the caves; the old meeting room of an ancient tribe that had died off long before my own arrived. And it backed up to the mesa wall.
Dead end.
She couldn’t go any further. And she couldn’t get out without going around me.
Never happen.
Nobody resided in this cavern. If there were an area most likely to be haunted, my bet would be on this one. Even beyond ghosts, emotions could seep into the rock and give a place an eerie feeling.
I couldn’t feel anything amiss, but magick coursed through my veins, as sure as my Navajo blood.
The darkness hung thick here, away from the candles illuminating the lived-in areas of the pueblo
So I called up my fae sight.
Light spilled from the walls around me, casting a bluish tinge over the longhouse. Fae sight could pull ambient energy from any material to create a dim light that allowed me to see in the dark. It was a handy trick, though it had its faults – namely that the smallest amount of manufactured light could fuck it up.
Georgie flared to view ahead of me, her skin overlaid by the same blue hue. Beneath the veil of light, shadows roamed like viscous oil over her skin. Acura’s shadows.
Georgie didn’t have my capabilities. She stood with her hands against the back wall, her shoulders heaving.
Blind and defeated.
“You’re under arrest for the assault of an untouched fae,” I said. “Come willingly, and you’ll live another day.”
When she spoke, her voice was sweet, girlish, and laced with tears. “I’ll live one more day only to die tomorrow.”
“You chose this life by spending time in the Rim. You could have been having bake sales at the teen center or some shit.”
“I didn’t choose to be shadow touched!”
I shrugged. “Actions speak louder than words. If you'd stayed safe in the Core where good little girls belong, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You won't find sympathy with me.”
“Of course I won’t. You’re a goddamned hound of the Reina!” she snapped.
I battled my temper. Quite frankly, I didn’t want to kill this girl. I didn’t want another human’s blood on my hands. But I didn’t take kindly to being compared to a dog doing its master’s bidding.
I strode forward and gripped her arm, ready to manhandle her if necessary. I’d promised my favorite twin brother dinner, and Georgie Lewis was wasting my fucking time.
She lashed out with an almost comical battle-cry. Her nails raked my face and neck, trailing fire over my skin. Her bulk - what little there was of her - rammed me in a feeble attempt to take me down.
Muscle is a tough thing to bring down, unfortunately, and my body wasn’t short on that
. I used her own momentum against her and whirled her face-first onto the floor. I knelt on her lower back and wrenched her arms behind her body, securing her wrists with the flexi-cuffs that would transport her to Headquarters.
On a background of her wails, I keyed up my Comwatch and radioed dispatch. “SEB277 for transfer of custody. Code 10-12.”
“Copy that, 277. Stand by.”
I watched the girl as I waited. She cried as if her life were over. Maybe it was. But I hadn’t been the one who turned her to the dark.
We live the consequences of our decisions until they kill us. Some of us quicker than others.
A beep from the flexi-cuffs indicated the transfer had been initiated. Georgina Lewis was still sobbing when the magic cloaked her and took her away from the cliffs to a cell downtown.
A loud silence followed her departure. I didn’t like that I’d brought violence into the longhouse, but I didn’t like it in the manner of a girl who’d veered so far from her home path, she may as well have been on a different planet.
Look at that. Didn’t have to shoot her. I holstered my gun. Drew it. Didn’t have to use it. I called that a win.
I couldn’t say what I heard in that moment that turned my attention to the door beyond the long house. My fae sight still shone through the darkness, turning the dark space inside and outside into a glowing, mid-day blue. A soft huff of air, possibly. The faint, acrid scent of smoke. Not cigarette smoke; not really. Tobacco, yes, but laced with something headier and sweeter. Clove?
I backed against the wall, turning my gaze on the door. The angle gave me full view of a man’s profile: he leaned against the façade of the longhouse, one foot against the wall, his knee crooked, a cigarette glowing dimly from his lips. Casual, like he spent all his time loitering outside abandoned pueblos in the dark.
“You’ve caught me,” he said sardonically. The lit end of his cigarette bounced with his words. Sickly-sweet smoke drifted toward the roof of the cave.
I’ll admit, it takes a lot to fluster me. The fact he knew I could see him in the dark from inside the pueblo baffled me.
He slithered away from the wall, shadow melding from the shadows, tinted blue by fae sight. Faster than any human should have been able, he stood in front of me.
Well, fuck. Guess I wasn’t going to survive the night without using my gun.
I whipped the Taurus up and leveled it on his face. The gentle glow of his cigarette screwed with my fae sight – one of those faults in design. I could see a lean, muscular torso, long legs beneath his black pants, bare forearms corded with sinew. But the cigarette glow distorted my fae sight, leaving his face insubstantial and blurry.
He batted my gun away. “Stop that. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I stuck the gun right back in his face. “Wanna tell me why you were creeping outside listening to my apprehension?”
“Apprehension? Like you’re the police, or something.” He chuckled. His voice was deep molasses, slow and thick with an ambiguous accent that placed him from nowhere and anywhere.
“I am the police.”
“No, you’re an embassy-trained dog of the Reina.” He sucked in a lungful of smoke and spoke as it drifted from his lips. “She’s brainwashing you to take care of the shadow touched, when you need to be focused on why Senka’s protection is dimming and how we can stop it.”
He didn’t sound like a normal shadow touched. He lacked that hollowness, the faithlessness that came from turning to the dark side. He sounded almost…logical. Matter-of-fact. He wasn’t human – no human could have moved like he did, so quick I couldn’t follow.
But he didn’t feel fae, either.
“Who are you?” I asked, sighting the gun.
Slowly, he took his cigarette from his lips and tossed it to the dirt at our feet. The little pinprick of light that had interfered with my fae sight extinguished, and suddenly, I could see him. All of him.
He ground the stub beneath his toe and met my gaze with eyes blacker-than-coal.
Fuck. He was shadow-touched. And he was gorgeous.
“Warren.” He flashed a grin like a beacon in the dark. “And I’m going to save your life.”
I lowered my gun. “What?”
Then the earth began to shake beneath our feet.
2
Warren grabbed me roughly by both biceps and jerked me against him.
I slammed into a wall of muscle and strength. It should have put me on alert; I should have reacted as if he had stabbed me, then shoved my gun between the delicate piano of his ribs and pulled the trigger. Instead, a thrill shot through my body. We molded together, his hard chest against my breasts, our thighs interlocked. For a brief instant, as I gazed up into his black eyes, I forgot about the earthquake. I forgot about Georgie Lewis and the longhouse and Senka Hollow.
The world shifted. I fell through space with nothing but a stranger to cling to in the madness. Colors and sounds ramped up until I couldn’t see or hear anything but noise and chaos, though Warren’s warm hands remained firmly pressed into my back. We were one with the universe, among the stars — maybe even stars ourselves — and the eternal dance of life cradled us as if the dancers had waited forever for our arrival. I was flying, but I was rooted by his hands on my skin. The sensation lasted forever and not nearly long enough.
Suddenly, everything righted itself.
I clutched Warren’s arms. My body wanted to continue swirling and the solid earth beneath me didn’t.
We stood beneath a purple desert sky as stars began to wink awake. The mesa towered behind Warren; the campfires haloed him so that I couldn’t see his face. Again. But I remembered it, all sharp angles and huge eyes illuminated by the magick of my fae sight.
I stepped away from his embrace and opened my mouth to ask what the hell had just happened.
He placed a finger to my lips. “Shh. Give it a moment, babe.”
I tried to ignore the heady scent his clove cigarette had left on his skin. I also tried not to enjoy the way his finger trailed away, more like a lover’s caress than an admonishment. Because it wasn’t bad enough he’d shushed me, but he’d called me babe like some common ho.
The low murmur of voices reached my ear. Instead of punching him in the nuts to make a point, I tuned in to the conversation.
“Georgie, no!”
“Interfere and sign your own death warrants!” a voice snarled.
No. Not a voice. My voice. My raspy, Res-accented voice.
What the actual fuck?
A blur of motion crossed the desert floor, headed toward the pueblos. Georgie, in her too-big khaki cargos and sweatshirt, stumbled for the cliff – fast for a pint-sized sorority girl. Behind her, a tall, muscular figure raced over the dirt, ebony hair flying like a cape.
Me.
I gaped as I disappeared into the pueblo after Georgie, then I leveled a sharp gaze on Warren.
“What did you do?”
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one out, a grin spreading across his face. He flipped the dark brown stick between his lips and illuminated a lighter I never saw him retrieve.
“Saved your life.” He lit his cigarette and took a long drag. He stared at me thoughtfully. “You’re prettier than I expected.”
“Do I know you?” I asked, exasperated at his cryptic phrases and enigmatic smile.
“No. Not yet.” He grinned wider and exhaled a stream of smoke.
Darkness enshrouded him, masking half his face in shadow. His messy mahogany-brown hair stood on end, defying gravity but looking soft to the touch. One black eye gazed at me in flickering firelight, the other masked by the play of firelight. He closed his thick, red lips over the cigarette and pulled.
I focused on his eyes to fan my own flames. The sight of him sucking on his cigarette did things to my nether-parts. My nether-parts were not supposed to be actively involved in apprehension work. Nether-parts were counterproductive.
His eyes helped: the iris an
d pupil were the same inky shade. The black nexus occupied more of the sclera than in a normal human or fae, leaving only a small window of white – the tell-tale sign of a shadow-touched.
“How long do you think that apprehension took?” he asked me.
I raised an eyebrow. “Minute. Minute-and-a-half if we’re including you. Why?”
“You’re quick. Impressive, actually. I can’t figure out if it was dumb luck that led that girl to a dead end, or if you nudged her there.” He tapped the side of his forehead. “Smart.”
“I appreciate the compliment. I’d appreciate it more if you told me how you knew about the quake, how you happened to be outside the longhouse, and how you can travel through time.”
“All in due time.” He grinned at his awful pun. His black gaze focused on the horizon. A faint rumble began to grow beneath our feet. The quake. He nodded. “There it is. Listen—” he exhaled another stupid stream of smoke that smelled like sex and a summer night, “—it’s been real. But I have somewhere to be, and you have a long night ahead of you. I’ll see you again real soon.”
He winked. The shadows around him shifted, melted, swarmed him… and he was gone.
Night had fallen completely by the time I curved my bike into a spot in the parking garage at SEB Headquarters.
I’d left three marked units at the mesa, taking a report on the damage to the cliff dwellings. Only a few Rim-dwellers got hurt in the quake; nobody died.
Including me, which I owed to Warren. Supposedly.
Nothing seemed out of place at Headquarters. The quake must have been small on the scale of one-to-holy-shit.
Headquarters consisted of more than just the SEB. We shared a single building the size of a city block with most of the Hollow’s important agencies: The Sapiens Enforcement Agency—the human equivalent of the Bureau; the offices of the government, which consisted of the Rein, the Reina, and our thirteen human and fae council members; Population, the Hollow’s jail and prison systems; and the morgue. The best of the best and the worst of the worst crossed this threshold, and sometimes the line between the two was very unclear.