Nascent Shadow (Temporal Armistice Book 1) Read online

  While adhered to the side of a building, I spend a few minutes getting the hang of working the tail. It’s prehensile and quite flexible. It can stab like a knife, slash, coil around, and probably even grab things (though the bladed barb would get in the way). On a lark, I stab at the wall, and startle myself when the point goes four inches deep in the stone.

  Holy shit. That thing is dangerous!

  And… stuck.

  I tug a few times, but it’s not going anywhere.

  Okay, if I am a demon, I’m like the world’s worst demon.

  That certainly does explain quite a few things. Blasé about killing, the fire thing, probably why I tried to have sex at fourteen. I say tried because Mom caught me, rather caught us. I brought Charlie Tavis from a couple trailers over to my bedroom. He’d come out of the blue with, ‘hey, wanna do it?’ I’d always been impulsive, and at the time, I was like, ‘sure, why not. Sounds fun.’ Mom walked in on us the exact instant he climbed up on top of me after we’d finished stripping. We’d both been staring at each other trying to figure out what went where.

  She screamed, “Brooklyn Chloe Amari! What are you doing?” at me.

  I didn’t mean it to be flippant, in fact, I’d been dead serious when I looked at her, blinked, and asked, “What? are we doing it wrong? Am I supposed to be on top?”

  Mom almost fainted. Probably because she knew I was serious. My not being embarrassed at getting caught made her embarrassment at being asked for advice ten times worse. So, yeah, Charlie never even talked to me again. Needless to say, we didn’t do anything that night. Once Mom recovered, I got ‘the talk.’ I’ll give the woman one thing. As much of a terror as I was, she knew the way to control me. Somewhere between telling me how much whatever I did hurt her and making me ‘promise not to’ do it again, I wound up listening. If she could get me to ‘promise,’ she won.

  Anyway. Time to give this flying thing another go.

  I chant, “You can fly. Don’t be afraid of heights,” to myself about ten times before springing away from the wall and stretching my wings.

  My tail, which I’d forgotten remained stuck like King Arthur’s sword, yanks me to an abrupt halt, and I slap face-first into the building for the second time. Only now I’m upside down and hanging by my tail.

  Ow. This sucks.

  I just about look up past myself at it when the blade slips free.

  “Aaaaaah!”

  The street rushes at my head. Every ounce of ‘nope!’ I can summon goes into my wings. The membranes cry out in agony, signaling like they’re seconds from peeling away from the spars. I scream past clenched teeth and careen around in an arc that catapults me upward. Flapping doesn’t seem to be doing much. My grace in the air feels like a pregnant milk cow on roller skates. Grunts and groans leak between my teeth as I fight for altitude. I’m getting some, but in small bits.

  Eventually, I work out that wanting to fly upward does more than any amount of physical flapping or―yes, I admit it, I tried to ‘swim.’ The wings perform better at full extension without being flapped. Something magical is going on here. I think about a direction, and I go that way. The tail does help me steer, but maybe that’s in my head. The onyx-bladed death noodle hanging out of my skirt seems more like a weapon than a flight-assist.

  Seriously, I could take a dude’s head off with that thing.

  For kicks, I swipe at a fire escape with my tail as I go by. The bladed tip sparks on contact, but slices the steel railing. A minor jolt from the impact rides up my tail, but no worse than hitting a guy in the head with a baseball bat felt to my knuckles. Talk about a concealed-carry weapon.

  Over the better part of the next hour, I acclimate to this newfound freedom. Collapsing my wings allows for fast dives, but for the most part, all I have to do is hold them out wide and ‘magic’ myself around. It’s difficult to tell how fast I’m going, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I were outpacing a car, at least in the city―but that isn’t saying much.

  Sometime in the future, assuming I don’t wake up and find out this is all a dream, I’ll need to time myself going between two points. I gotta know. Though, looming-big-dude with glowing gold eyes is my second WTF moment. Maybe I should get the hell out of the sky and lay low?

  On that note, I pull around in a tight circle and race back to my building.

  My bare feet clap on concrete as I land. Stings. All right, I came down a bit hard. I can improve on that. Hey, I went from flying face first into an apartment tower to pulling off some nifty aerial maneuvers in an hour. I’ll get this worked out.

  A seconds’ concentration hides my wings and tail, and I once again look like a normal human.

  Cool.

  Only… I’m not a normal human.

  I gaze up at the overcast sky, silent for a while, listening to the wind. My hair flaps over my face, but I ignore it. “What am I?”

  Not that I expected an answer, but I don’t get one.

  Eventually, I bow my head. I can’t decide if I should feel thrilled or worried. I take one more breath of crisp night air, and trudge back inside.

  hursday felt too normal. Other than an all-hands meeting to debrief everyone on the hotel blaze, my shift consisted of routine. Cleaning the stationhouse, checking hoses, making sure my replacement gear fit. They also sent me to Starbucks. Usually, a probie gets that detail, but being the only woman here, I somehow keep doing it. The only reason I put up with it is someone else pays for whatever I want, within reason, as long as I hoof it to pick up the order. But I like being bored at work. It means no one’s life is in danger. All day, I keep looking over my shoulder for tall, dark, and golden-eyed.

  Natalie, my best/only friend calls me Friday afternoon and suggests we go out. She’s lucky on two fronts: she gets to set her own work hours, and if she screws up at her job, no one gets hurt. Usually. Okay, she’s an enchanter, so I suppose if she really screws up, someone could theoretically get hurt―or turned into a fuzzy animal―but she’s too careful for that. If anything, she’d keep the wild energies from going off in a random direction and blow her shop to bits before she let anyone else get injured.

  Since I’ve had two days of relative peace―even the neighbors haven’t been fighting―I say yes. I haven’t seen Nat in a couple days, and she’s tuned into my same broken wavelength. I’m more inclined to think it’s been quiet next door more due to Frank not being around than the two of them trying to keep things calm for Ashley’s sake.

  My twelve-hour shift ends at six. Hey, it’s not too bad. I have Monday off, and if there’s nothing to do at the stationhouse, I’m officially allowed to sleep if I want. We even have a barracks upstairs. At least some part of my job is merely being there in case of an emergency. Sometimes, we fill the space with refresher training on stuff like CPR or working out in our pathetic little gym. Some of the guys also go for EMT certification.

  I’d been tempted to skip taking the PEPTA bus to work Friday and fly, but broad daylight made me chicken out. A couple months ago, a cockatrice strayed into the city, and you’d have thought it heralded the end of the world. The giant green chicken of the apocalypse or something. Don’t get me wrong, those things are nasty. Locking eyes with one can leave a person paralyzed for weeks. We had some courses on that. You wouldn’t believe the number of Cockatrice Pulmonary Resuscitation jokes a guy can come up with in ten minutes.

  What had really shocked everyone hadn’t been the cockatrice in and of itself, but that a magical creature made it into the city. Back in ancient times, they roamed all over the place, but modern cities―at least the big ones like Philadelphia―have wards. Magical beasts can’t get in. Like putting up an electric fence to keep cows in, or in this case out. Cops went nuts trying to find the breach, and they never did.

  Of course, the mayor assured everyone all was well. The damn city could be burning all around him and that ass-kisser would try to tell everyone not to worry. What’s truly sad is that about thirty percent of the Commerce party would happily
agree with him. Too stupid to realize or too loyal to question. Sigh. I’m not officially a Populist either. I couldn’t care less about politics; it’s more watching stupid people act against their own self-interest that boggles my mind. One cockatrice walks down the street, and the Commerce side blames Mexicans while the Populists demand more money for infrastructure. Pity the Mage party is a laughingstock that’ll never see office.

  So, yeah, speaking of giant green ones… I chickened out of flying.

  Rather than catch a PEPTA, I wait for Natalie’s little cream-colored Scarab. A few minutes past six, she comes sliding around the corner two blocks away. She drives a little foreign car with a roundish shape that she enchanted to be even cuter. The headlights have eyelashes that blink, and I swear the thing’s front bumper makes it look like it’s smiling. She’s also put in a ton of comfort enchantments.

  I ooze in the passenger door and flop into a chintzy little bucket seat that feels like a high-end living room recliner. Two figurines, a princess and a unicorn, wander around her dashboard. Yeah. So, my best friend is girly as hell. She’s a few months older than me―she turned twenty-four in February―but she usually dresses like she’s twelve. Nat loves the frilled socks and white dresses.

  Except when we go out. Tonight, she looks fairly normal: nice red dress that bares her left shoulder and short heels. I’m still rocking the fire department white polo shirt and black BDU pants.

  “Hey.” I unbutton my collar. “Need to hit the apartment and change.”

  “Really?” asks Natalie. “I thought you were going like that.”

  “Ha. Ha.”

  We stop at my place long enough for me to grab a black brocade blouse, matching choker, and a black lace miniskirt with black tights. When the two of us are hanging (and not going out), people never believe we’re together. Girly-girl and the Doom Queen. That’s her name for us anyway. Like I said, she’s twenty-four going on twelve.

  I examine my fingernails and make my claws pop out. Heh. Maybe I am the Doom Queen.

  We arrive at a nightclub-slash-bar named Niflheim at twenty after seven. Natalie zips her little Scarab into the parking lot, and I swear what her hands do to the wheel does not correspond to where the car actually steers. She looks like a child with a pretend steering wheel half the time, which makes me think the car’s running on mental command somehow, like my flying. Either way, we wind up in a parking space by this building that looks like someone tore it out of a thousand years ago.

  The façade is stone, like a castle, with giant crossed axes mounted between each window. Heavy, white fog pours from the roof between the crenelations, falling in shafts down the side of the building to gather in a layer at the ground. Pulses of violet, red, and blue light flicker in the windows, brighter on the right side of the building.

  “Wow. Where’d you find this slice of Heaven?” I ask. Whenever we go out, which these days is about twice a month, we take turns picking a place we’ve never been to before. “Looks gothic.”

  “Figured you’d like it.” Natalie winks at me before patting the dashboard and whispering, “Okay, sweetie. Time for a nap.”

  The car shuts down.

  When we get out, the distinct lack of skull-pounding music makes me smile. I can hear music, but only enough to know it exists inside, not pick out what the song is. That’s a definite plus. Any place where it’s so loud you can dance in the parking lot and feel like you’re in the club is not for me. I guess I’m ‘old’ now. A couple years ago, ear-bleeding volume didn’t bother me. Every bar and nightclub back home where I grew up in Quakertown knew me on sight. Back then, I didn’t have real friends, just a group of high school outcasts who I did stupid shit with. Once they realized I had weak impulse control and no shame, the dares started.

  So yeah, we got kicked out of a lot of venues.

  Natalie takes point and zips across the parking lot to the end of the line waiting to get in. I don’t know how on Earth she can move so fast in six-inch stilettos. The boots I matched to this outfit have like a three-inch (if that) heel, and I’m a little wobbly. Never did the girly thing. I should’ve stuck with the Doc Martens; they’d have fit this outfit, too. My fault for trying to dress up.

  Bleh.

  Eventually, we get to the door, and of course, we both get carded. I look eighteen, and Natalie acts like she’s fifteen―though to be fair, no one would mistake her for being too young if she didn’t open her mouth. The guy gives me a suspicious squint, thinking my license is fake. Seems this outfit shaves a few years off.

  “Twenty-three? Really?” the guy frowns.

  “Yes, really. Hang on.” I dig my wallet out of my purse and flash my FD identification. The official hat and uniform shirt make me look at least twenty. “See? I blame my good genes.”

  The bouncer takes my fire department ID and holds it close, comparing the pictures.

  Irritated, I glare at him. “I am old enough.”

  He flinches, remains still for a second, and hands me back the IDs before speaking in a slow monotone. “You’re old enough.”

  “Thanks.” I nab the IDs and fumble to put them away. Way to get my night off on the right foot.

  Natalie scurries up beside me. “Dude. Did you just mind-wank the bouncer?”

  “Huh?”

  She grins. “You like totally did. You said”―her voice drops, stinking at trying to imitate me―“I’m old enough. And he was all like zombie”―Natalie holds her arms out and moans―“You’re old enough.”

  I laugh. “I can’t do that kinda stuff. Only move things.” Really. I can’t. I peer back at the guy who’s talking normally again. Did I do that, or was he messing with us?

  She pulls me inside before I can think more about it. We pass a coat check area in a short hallway connecting the entrance to the main room. Black walls make it feel claustrophobic and narrow. I don’t see any obvious exits other than the one we’re in. Geez. I am sure glad I can’t burn. This place would be a deathtrap if fire broke out.

  Niflheim’s interior has three distinct sections. All the way on the right, there’s a stage and dance floor awash in flashing lights. A girl in a lame blonde wig dressed up like a techno-Valkyrie is doing the DJ thing on the stage, and there’s so many people gyrating around that my ‘fire code violation’ sense is screaming.

  Nothing like a responsible day job to suck the fun out of life.

  The middle space, right in front of us, has a bunch of tiny, round tables at standing height. A crowd of twenty-somethings, about half Goths, mingle about, using the tables mostly to hold their drinks. Off to the left, the décor gives off a restaurant vibe, with bigger, normal-height tables and some booth seats. They took a page out of those kitschy places’ book―there’s crap all over the walls, but it’s like axes, shields, swords, yeti-masks and such. Like if Vikings invaded a TGI Fridays.

  “Where to?” I ask.

  Natalie grins, grabs my hand, and drags me to the dance area.

  Cool.

  When we first started doing our semi-weekly ‘outings,’ the main plan had been to find guys to hook up with. Two years later, we go to have fun and unwind. I suppose if we happen to run into a pair of guys who get past my intuition―and by that, I mean reading their intentions―we might see where that takes us, but it’s not like before. Back then, we had a pact that if one of us hooked up with a guy, and the other didn’t, one of us would be cool going home alone. Nowadays, it’s both or nothing. We’re here for us.

  The techno music is timed to the flashing lights. At least a third of the dancers on the floor wear Viking-y accessories. More than a few have plastic helmets. At least six are dressed like Goths, two of which have on fake horns. A couple even have vampire fangs. Never did understand that particular fetish.

  Natalie and I start out dancing near each other, but as the crowd shifts and flows, we separate. Bodies bump and rub against each other. I get pawed a little, and paw right back. My hair’s down to my waist and thick; it could hide the headban
d for those fake horns.

  Did I mention I have shitty impulse control?

  Before I can even try to do it on purpose, my horns pop out. Amid the flashing colored lights, the gyrating bodies, and the overall dimness, they become another piece of costume fantasy. The music gets into my blood, and I throw myself into the spinning dance.

  Minutes later, my mojo’s interrupted when a guy slides his hand around my waist and pulls me in close, chest to chest. Oh what the hell? I snarl playfully at him while we undulate together.

  “Awesome fangs,” he yells over the music.

  Oops. Wow, I have fangs too? I feel my eyes widen, but I laugh. “You say the sweetest things.”

  “Where’d you get ‘em? They’re badass. So real looking.” He half-turns away, his body twisting and bending in time with the music.

  “My mother gave them to me.” So, I’m being a wiseass; he doesn’t need to know that.

  “Right on. Your mom sounds cool.”

  I grin. Yeah, she is. Okay, now I know I’m old. Mom and I never really fought, even at my worst. Nor did I ever ‘hate’ her. I spent a good few years thinking her an annoying killjoy, but seeing as how I can look at people and know their true intentions, I never doubted she loved me to the point of devotion. Really, the woman would’ve jumped into traffic to save me. It’s really hard―even as a tween―to shout ‘I hate you’ after being grounded, when the person I’m about to bite the head off of is standing there radiating love and worry.

  I’m glad she got away from that damn waitress job. She found a book some guy left behind in his seat that had a bunch of magic type stuff in it. Turns out, Mom had a gift. Not everyone can do magic―only about one in every couple hundred. Of that group, about three percent have serious ability, like tossing around fireballs or being a Lifemage, Hydromancer, or something that gets on TV.