A Beth-Hill Novel Universe: The Shadows Trilogy, Book 2: Lost In Shadows by Jennifer St. Clair

Chapter 1

"He is alive, and I want you to bring him to me." Terrin did not turn from the window to face the figure standing beside the door.

"But I saw him die, my lord. How can Nicodemus be alive?" The voice was rough with suspicion. "It has to be a trick."

"It is no trick. Skade holds his spirit in a mirror; he's trapped in there with her cursed spells. When I..." Terrin glanced down at his clenched hands and felt the smooth, unbroken flow of his spell between them. "When I liberated my sons from Iomar, I found him. She's been hiding him in plain sight all this time."

"I don't like it," the dark figure muttered. "I don't like going into Iomar. You know she has wards set against us, don't you? It hurts when I go there."

"The wards are nothing," Terrin growled. "I want you to bring me Nicodemus. I don't care who you have to kill to get him out of that mirror. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes, my lord."

"I'd do it myself, but she knows me. She doesn't know you. Go to Iomar. Find Nicodemus, and bring him back in this." He held out a small black velvet bag. "Disguise yourself as one of her servants, perhaps. She has enough of them in that cursed castle."

A gloved hand took the bag from Terrin's fingers and opened it. The dark figure shook a delicate crystal pendant out on the palm of his hand and held it up so it sparkled in the moonlight.

"Trap him in this? How?"

"Blood, you fool. How do you think she put him in that mirror in the first place?" Terrin pulled on the spell and felt his son jerk in his sleep. He smiled. "Kill as many of her servants as you need to; just bring him back."

"Yes, my lord." The dark figure slipped the pendant back into the bag. His form seemed to shimmer in the darkness for a moment, then he stepped out of the shadows and bowed to Terrin, no longer gloved; no longer shadowed.

"I could go as Michael."

Terrin's lips twitched. "And blame him again for something he had no part in? The idea has its merits, I'll admit. She will be furious if she thinks her son has returned to rescue his friend."

"So?"

"Do we know where he is?" Terrin asked, turning back to stare out the window. "We might need to...ensure his cooperation."

"Once we have Nicodemus, we can find out."

"Then proceed."

Chapter 2

Skade had given up, but Nicodemus had not. He spent hours trying to slip past Terrin's spells; hours he could have spent alone in the gray featureless confines of the mirror as he had for so many years.

She had let him keep his name, but the memories were gone again. He was glad of that; they would have only distracted him and gotten in the way. Without them, he could concentrate on finding Alban and the vampire. So far, his luck had been marginal at best.

Skade's beads were the only link he had to the castle, but Terrin's spells had so far prevented him from linking up to them again. He had managed to see into the throne room where he had last seen Alban and the vampire, but both were gone and Terrin had not returned.

"Have you found them yet?" Skade's voice pulled him away from Leysan and back to the mirror. Nicodemus blinked at her.

"Found them?" Had she known of his search all along?

"Espen tells me we have no true cause to attack Leysan unless we know the vampire and Alban are alive." There were lines on Skade's forehead that had not been there before, and dark circles under her eyes. "I know you're still looking for them, Mir...Nicodemus."

Even though his name no longer caused him pain, he could not help but flinch. "I won't give up." He said this as if he expected her to punish him.

She favored him with a small smile. "I don't expect you to. In fact, I want you to find them."

"I want to find them too," the Ghost said softly.

Skade gave him an appraising glance. "You're not blaming yourself, are you? It wasn't your fault."

"It was my mirror." He closed his eyes and turned away from her, remembering the pain of Terrin's spell.

"It wasn't your fault." Skade put one hand on the mirror. "Nicodemus, look at me."

He opened his eyes. Her face blurred until he blinked the tears away.

"It wasn't your fault."

"I know." He hit his side of the mirror in frustration and watched the spells ripple across the glass. "But it was my mirror. I can't help but feel responsible."

Skade smiled. "If anyone should feel responsible, it should be me. This is my castle. I told them they were safe here."

Nicodemus shrugged.

"You have changed." Skade stared at him. "For the better, I think. Before, you wouldn't have felt responsible for anything."

She had honored his request not to remember anything from his former life, but sometimes he wished she had refused. He knew from his reactions to the memories that they had not been good ones, but they were still a part of him, of his identity.

"I feel responsible now, my lady." He had lost most of his fear of her since Alban and the vampire vanished. "And I won't stop until I find them."

"And if they're dead?" Skade spoke the question neither of them wanted to voice.

"Then I will help you make Terrin pay."

Skade nodded, satisfied. "I don't want you to risk your life to find out if they're alive, Nicodemus. Do you understand me?"

He would risk his soul if he had a chance to free them, but he would not tell her that. He had a feeling she already knew.

Chapter 3

The vampire lay in darkness, pain coloring his vision red. He could not move; could not protect himself from the rats that crept up to sniff his flesh. His entire body felt like it was on fire and movement would be agony.

After a little while, he managed to twitch a finger, and felt something smooth against the palm of his hand. He didn't realize what it was until much later, after he lifted his arm and curled his hand on his chest.

Skade's bracelet glittered on his arm. He did not remember picking it up before Terrin banished him to the dungeons. He certainly didn't remember slipping it on his arm.

He concentrated on the bracelet for a while, slowly curling his fingers until he managed to push it far enough forward to touch the row of red beads. Nothing happened, but he was not really disappointed. He had felt Terrin seal the castle against outside spells. Obviously Skade could not get through, but could he help her along a little?

He had his name back now, after all. The repercussions of that still shuddered through his mind. A name equaled power, and power meant he might be able to get a message to Skade.  He just hoped she wouldn't give up.

He concentrated on the beads. He thought he had sensed a presence in them before, but it was gone now. The beads were only beads, powerful in their own right, but not powerful enough to free him or Alban.

A rustling sound near his ear told him the rats were still trying to decide if he would taste good or not. The vampire wished he could drink their blood, but he knew it would not help him. And he was too weak to catch them, now. Terrin had seen to that.

He ignored the rats and concentrated on Skade's beads again, struggling past the numbing weakness to find any shred of power he could utilize. He found nothing. No power, no strength. He felt a tear slip down the side of his face.

One of the rats licked it off.

The vampire shuddered and closed his eyes as the rat clambered over his face, its cold greasy feet leaving a faint unpleasantness across his skin. The rat halted on his chest and crouched over Skade's bracelet. The vampire tried to shoo it away, but it was not fazed by the weak twitching of his hand.

He felt a tug on the bracelet, as the rat worked at the string that knotted the beads together. Panic bloomed in the vampire's chest. Without the bracelet, he had no hope. Without the bracelet, he might as well let the rats eat him.

The rat ignored his frantic attempts to scare it away. It nipped his flesh more than once, but the vampire saw no blood from the wounds.

When the first thread parted beneath the rat's sharp teeth, the vampire felt something course through his body and lodge in his heart. He gasped.

The rat glanced back at him, then returned to its work. Its elongated face seemed to be bathed in bloody red, as if the beads had begun to glow again, but they remained dark and silent, their beauty marred by the rat's saliva.

The vampire felt the last thread part. The beads fell away from his wrist and onto his chest. One rolled off into the rotted straw, but the others remained. Skade's bracelet was well made.

The rat took one of the beads into its mouth and dragged them back the way it had come. The vampire closed his eyes again, expecting to feel the damp feet press against his eyes, but the rat didn't seem to be in a hurry to climb back down to the floor.

He cracked open one eye just as the rat's claws scraped across his cheekbone. Pain flared through his head. He opened his mouth to scream.

One of the beads at the very end of the string fell into his open mouth. It lay there for a moment against his tongue, cold and alien, then slowly warmed. The familiar taste of blood filled his mouth. He swallowed convulsively, and the bead slid down his throat, dissolving as it went.

He almost choked as blessed warmth crept through his veins, stirring both power and pain. The rat, oblivious, struggled to pull the strand of beads away.

The vampire closed his mouth and locked his teeth around the string. The beads continued to dissolve, giving him much-needed nourishment. He didn't understand how they could be blood and beads at the same time, but he wasn't about to question his good fortune.

After a minute, he found he had enough strength to sit up and wrest the rest of the strand of beads from the rat, who scurried into a large hole in the wall. The vampire stared at it for a moment, then leaned back against the seeping wall and clenched his fingers around the beads. He had two choices. If the rest of the beads worked the same as the ones that had already dissolved, he could use them all now and then see if he had enough strength to escape. His other choice would be to stay half-starved for as long as he could, and hope for rescue.

Neither choice seemed very promising.

One of the rats slipped out of the hole, and a large piece of the wall fell away under its scrabbling paws. The vampire stared. It was possible--barely--that the rats might know a way out of the castle that Terrin had not blocked. He crawled across the cell, cradling the beads against his chest with one hand, and watched the rats scatter away.

When he groped inside the hole, he felt only emptiness as far as he could reach. The darkness beyond the hole smelled like rotting meat, but he felt a faint breeze slide across his skin.

A breeze might mean a way out. And he had no other options but to try.

He swallowed all but three of the remaining beads, waited for the strength to trickle into his body, and slowly began to work at the crumbling hole.

It didn't take him very long to widen it enough to squeeze through, but he stuck his head through first to make sure he would not fall down some forgotten shaft and break every bone in his body. The rats' thoroughfare seemed to be a gap between cells; a narrow passageway that led into darkness.

He scraped his skin raw wriggling through the widened hole, but he did fit into the passageway and crawled on hands and knees towards the source of the faint breeze.

He tried to ignore the muck squishing up between his fingers and the rats that scurried out of his way. He had to focus on freedom.

Or failing that, somehow getting a message to Skade that he was not dead.