Feather
Before I left Sanctuary, the door to the sex dungeon had been locked with a word of power. Now, with its lower hinge broken, it swung open crazily as I ran through. The hallways down here were a labyrinth, and Sanctuary couldn’t help me find my guys. In fact, it couldn’t even defend itself. It screamed in silent agony as gargantuan shadow teeth ripped at the weak place in its underbelly. Shadows were already comingthrough, and a few of them confronted me, though they seemed confused for a moment before they attacked.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I gritted out, using the soul knife and a quickly sung word in High Angelic to cut them down when they attacked anyway. They weren’t smart enough to listen, and when a far larger one confronted me, I knew I didn’t have time to play. This shadow was trying to hurt me, maybe kill me. It wasn’t confused; it was enraged.
I sang a shrill line of a hymn, and sliced through it, shattering it into... glitter? Dang, yeah. There was glitter everywhere. My glowing skin sent enough light to the floor that it reflected flying sparks all around the corridor. The reflections seemed to burn the smaller shadows, and they fled.
I could feel the realm funneling power to keep Gavriel alive, though I wasn’t sure about Rumple. Would the realm recognize him as one of us, with the smut he’d taken on in the Abyss? Would the shadows go after him, or would they remember him, even think he was on their side?
The idea was a tiny light bulb moment, and I leaped on it. Maybe I could trick the shadows into thinking I was on their side.
A tiny part of me whisperedthere are no sides, but I brushed it away. I stared at the gray curlicues under my skin and sang them a children’s song. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
It didn’t work, until I closed my eyes, remembering that song being sung by an abusive uncle in one of my worst lifetimes on Earth. I’d had to hide my younger siblings from him for days at a time, sneaking them food and water, while I suffered in their place. The impotent rage and fury I’d felt back then—before I drowned him in the swimming pool—roared to the front of my mind. I channeled it into the hateful words:Come out, come out, wherever you are.My skin burned, and I opened my eyes.
Well, that did the trick.It hadn’t taken more than a second for the silvery-gray lines to push to the surface in response to my remembered rage. As more and more of them appeared, I realized I was far more “tainted” than anyone could see. Or than I’d even imagined. How much of himself had Rumple accidentally left in me when he remade me in the Abyss? And had he meant to do it?
In less than five seconds, the surface of my skin was shining with an eerie glow, as if my prismatic Celestial light had become Celestial… shadow. I focused on the creature in front of me, that had assumed the shape of some sort of four-legged animal—possibly a centaur.
“Let me pass,” I commanded. It rose up on its back legs, like a rearing stallion. I tried again. “Let me pass. I need to get through.”
It stamped at the ground silently, and I racked my brain for an idea. I didn’t want to fight this thing. I had no time for injuries, and I didn’t want to hurt it either, which was a whole ball of string I had no time to unravel right now.
I thought back to the shadow beast I’d tied up. I couldn’t access Sanctuary’s power here, though, since Gav and Rumple needed every scrap to keep the big baddie out. That beast had turned out to be submissive to the core. Maybe I could use all the thorough research I’d done in my earthly lives to find the key to unlocking this one.
“Don’t you want to be a good boy?” I asked the creature. It spat at me.Spat!“Hey, you freak,” I shouted. “I am into a lot of things—I’ve got more kinks than an old-fashioned telephone cord—but I amnotinto spitting. That’s foul.” Unless it was in my sexy dentist fantasy, but that spit was different. And this shadow thing didn’t need to know about my seventy-second favorite fantasy anyway. “You’re a disgusting creature.”
The shadow beast seemed to shrink a little.
Wait.
“You’re just a dirty little shadow monster, aren’t you?” I tried. It shivered, turning a deeper shade of gray. “I knew it. Filthy, nasty thing. Shouldn’t even be allowed to look at me, should you? Kneel against the wall, back to me, head between your knees.” It hesitated, and I ordered, “Do itnow, you pathetic slut. You will obey your mistress.”
And the dang thing did it.
I stalked past, not even glancing down. “Stay there, anddon’t move. Or I’ll tell everyone your new name: Feather’s Dirty Shadow Whore.”
I hadn’t imagined such a thing was possible, but I was fairly certain the shadow monster jizzed on the floor.
“Lick it up before I get back,” I called, racing past, deeply grateful that I hadn’t limited my research to kinks I enjoyed. Degradation play wasn’t for me, but it sure as shootin’ did the trick for that guy.
I ran down another hall, turning one corner after another. Shadows saw me, but with my gray skin none of them confronted me at all. It was the perfect camouflage.
Finally, after passing dozens of open doors and empty cells, I began seeing the corpses of Guides on the floor. And smeared on the walls. And sometimes the ceilings. All of the bodies had golden robes, and I recognized a few of the faces. Well, the ones who still had faces. I tried not to puke.
“What the fudge happened here?” I murmured, but I knew. This had to be where Rumple had come through. He’d known about the way the Guides had treated me. I wasn’t sure what they’d all been doing down here—I liked to think they’d come down to protect the realm when Rumple entered, but I knew better. Had they been in the cells?
I ran through a pool of blood and ichor, almost slipping around the next corner and finally found what I was looking for.
Gavriel had wrapped himself around what looked like a giant hunk of volcanic rock, a pitted, deep gray boulder. Shadows were attacking him, tearing at his feathers and hair, and blood poured down his back in rivers so wide, I wasn’t sure how he was alive. He was shouting, “Rafe. Pull back. Pull back!” and had his arms wrapped around the rock, tugging it, trying to lift it.
It dawned on me slowly that this was no boulder. It was my Rumple, half-stuffed into a hole in the golden fabric of the wall. Then Rumple’s mental voice, thready and frail in a way I had never heard it, whispered back,Can’t. Must keep her… safe.
He meant me.
“I’m here, Rumple! I’m here!” I called, and sprinted to them.
Gavriel twisted his head toward me at my shout. “Feather, get back!” Half the shadows that had been attacking him started for me, and these ones didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t shiny. They were so hungry; all I could sense was a frenzied need to consume.
