J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

But where was he going?

The ground became a blur of passing color beneath her, the ordered gardens of the mansion gave way to wild fields then low, rolling hills covered in heather and peat. Then the forest below, an abrupt line of dark trees so thick they appeared like a body of water, like a vast, ancient lake...placid on the surface, with danger and secrets lurking below.

Thunder began a long, distant rumble.

The first of the rain began just as she lost sight of him beyond the rise of a hill. A gentle sheeting of mist became something more definite, heavier drops that slipped through her, first softly then with more energy, slicing, pricking like a million tiny needles. She rose up farther into the sky, banked over the hill, and then paused, searching the leaden sky and the silent black forest below.

Leander was nowhere to be seen.

She caught his scent far to the south, perhaps a dozen miles, just a faint lure of spice and smoke wafting on the freezing wind. Only a few atoms of his presence still lingered in the air, but it was enough. She shot toward it, using it to guide her like clues in a game of hide-and-seek, until finally it became strong enough that she slowed at the edge of a meadow, searching.

But this wasn’t a natural clearing, she saw as she hovered above. This was man made, with orderly beds of flowers and a low stone wall that ran the length of it.

Where was he? The rain now sliced through her so hard she had to concentrate on staying vapor. It was uncomfortable. She contracted, fighting the storm. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold herself in this form.

But there—just across the clearing, next to a massive, dripping conifer—the gleam of water sliding over naked skin.

He was crouched low to the ground with one hand on the rough bark of the giant tree, the other sunk into the earth. He was looking up at her, unsmiling.

She skirted the perimeter of the clearing, staring down at the intentional beauty of the gardens and grasses and odd, flat pieces of moss-covered stones, and Shifted to woman just behind Leander. Relief flooded through her as she took air into her lungs and stretched her limbs. The scent of wet earth and rainwater and him hit her nose, followed quickly by the bite of freezing air on her unclad skin.

They were shielded from the blunt edge of the storm by the canopy of boughs above them, but she was still getting wet, and quickly. She padded over the soft layer of dead leaf and moss underfoot and crouched down next to Leander, her knees in the wet bracken, shivering with cold. They did not look at each other.

“Where are we?”

His voice came on a draft of frigid air. “The final resting place of the Ikati .”

She came to her feet at once, forgetting her nudity and the cold and the wet and the storm raging above. He rose silently beside her and turned his face toward hers.

“You brought me to a cemetery?” She watched a drop of water fall from above to catch the rise of his cheek, then slide down over it like a tear. He did not blink. “Why?”

“I wanted you to see something,” he said evenly, his eyes dark and unfathomable.

“What?”

A small flicker of emotion flared in his eyes, but was quickly extinguished.

“Your father’s grave.”

He turned and walked away from her, out into the open clearing and the raging storm. His naked body was soaked at once by the downpour, his hair blew slick and black around his shoulders, buffeted by the wind.

But she only stared after him, too frozen to move.

Daria was naked.

She was also gagged and blindfolded, her arms and legs bound so tightly with rope the skin beneath was chafed and bleeding. It wasn’t the only part of her that bled. The long, cross-shaped gouge they carved in her upper arm with the tip of a hunting knife was still bleeding freely and throbbing.

She had been in the trunk of this vehicle for hours, since she had awoken with the blinding pain in the back of her head where they had hit her with something blunt and heavy. Her arms were tied behind her back, her knees were drawn up against her chest, her body was racked with uncontrollable shivering.

They would kill her. Of that she was sure.

Expurgari . Terror and fury roiled in the pit of her stomach, sending the acrid sting of bile rising up her throat.

She hadn’t seen or heard them sneak up on her, which meant they were both sly and clever. She hadn’t smelled them either, which meant they knew how to disguise their scent from the Ikati .

It also meant they had been waiting, watching, all the while right under their noses.

She’d been winded by all the dancing, taking turns with her husband and a flushed, distracted Christian and many other men of the tribe—friends and relations both—and had gone out to the rose garden for a breath of fresh air. She was alone for only a moment, leaning against a flowering trellis of jasmine, gazing up at the stars.

She was distracted, undeniably, with the news that had spread like buckshot through the gathered gentry that Jenna’s Shift had been confirmed, in front of the Assembly, that Leander himself had made her do it—with a kiss , no less—then they both had disappeared.

To discuss things further, most likely.

She smiled, gazing up at the stars, thinking of a match between the two of them. For all his independent ways, she knew her brother longed for a partner who could love him, who would stand up to him and stand by him and challenge him to be his best. And Jenna seemed perfectly suited to that task. Perhaps she could even persuade him to allow the women of the colony a more active role in the decisions that affected their lives.

A cluster of stars in Virgo blinked down at her, millions of light-years away, winking with dreams and promise.

And then the hands closed hard around her mouth.

They were calloused and rough and covered in something tacky and viscous, like pine resin. There was a blinding stab of pain in the back of her head that sent scarlet and orange fireflies exploding behind her closed lids. A wave of intense dizziness hit her, followed very quickly by a rising swell of blackness, then nothing at all.

Until she had awoken to the fact of her limbs bound, her skin bruised and cut, her body lying atop a filthy, stinking blanket in the black prison of the trunk. The low, melancholy hum of spinning tires and the road rolling away beneath her sang a song of good-bye. She was being taken far from her home, far from any hope of rescue.

There would be no escape from them, she knew. She was smaller and shackled and weak with injury. She couldn’t Shift. She bit her lip to hold back a sob and prayed she would be strong enough not to talk.

Though they would surely have gruesome ways of trying to make her.

Daria’s heart began a painful throb within her chest as the car slowed, then stopped. She heard doors opening and closing, the crunch of boots on gravel, low, masculine voices muttering something she couldn’t make out. A burst of cold air hit her naked skin as the lid of the trunk popped open.

She screamed against the gag as two pairs of big hands closed around her wrists and ankles and hauled her from the trunk.

Leander hadn’t anticipated Jenna’s reaction to seeing her father’s grave. He couldn’t have. Everything he knew of her until this moment was of a woman so strong and defiant you couldn’t even tell her the time without garnering a swift contradiction.

Yet at the sight of the flat stone carved with her father’s name, she crumpled to the ground like a discarded tissue and began to weep, great wracking sobs that shook her whole body as she knelt, her hair spread wet and thick over her shoulders and back like a dripping funeral shroud, her knees and fingers sunk deep into the sodden grass.