We went further into the apartment to evaluate the damage. Being here reminded me of the brief time we visited Ty’s apartment. It had been very basic and so incredibly small, almost oppressive. Jaxxim's apartment was much larger, another confirmation of the station and privilege Ty had lost when he was demoted after the incident. Everywhere I looked, there was something else destroyed, another piece of Jaxxim's life seemingly broken and tossed to the floor. It didn't look like anyone had come in here looking for something specific. If that was the case, the drawers might be toppled over and the closet standing open, but I didn't think that there would be much need for smashing the wooden coffee table into pieces or dismantling every item off the entertainment center. Those were things that were surely malicious, done only to make a statement.

  “Do you think Lunaris is responsible for this?” I asked.

  “No,” Bex said. “This doesn't look like the work of Lunaris, especially not the group I was with. They wouldn't take the time to do something like this without there being a specific reason. Like with Ashe; they tormented her, but the point was to get her back here and to lead them to you. They knew if they could get her here and scare her, she would reach out to you and you would come for her. There's no point to any of this but just a show of destruction and power. It's sending a message, but not the same one Lunaris would want to.”

  “Who knows about this apartment?” I asked Jaxxim.

  He shook his head, shrugging almost hopelessly, like he was trying to wrap his head around what he was seeing throughout his apartment while evaluating who might have done it.

  “I don't know,” he said. “Everyone. No one? I really don't know. It's not like it's something I hid from people. There be no reason for that. But I also didn't go around handing out business cards with my address, either. There isn't really anyone I needed to know about this place.”

  It was a heavier statement than the words themselves conveyed. That simple statement gave a glimpse into the life of a Shade. It really wasn't much of a life. He belongs completely to the Prime, devoted to whatever service they asked of him. It meant he thought and acted as a being made only for that purpose, rather than one with other facets. It left no room for any other compulsions or relationships. There would be no reason why anyone would need to know about his apartment, because Jaxxim had no one else in his life who he would want to share the space with. If he wasn't at the palace with the other Shade guards, on an assignment set by the Prime, or accompanying Aurora, he was simply alone. There was no reason to question it, because it was his reality. It explains the intensity he felt to protect Aurora. His entire purpose revolved around the importance of his responsibility toward her. Of all the Shade guards under the Prime, he had been selected as her personal bodyguard, and that it was what mattered to him more than anything. Without that, he had little other definition of himself.

  When we were facing off against the Lunaris fighters in the industrial site, I had begun to see bits of something more than his identity as a Shade breaking through. Now that we were in his apartment and he was trying to make sense of what happened, there was more. It was fascinating to see the gradual weakening of the hardened Shade shell around him as he discovered other elements of himself. I realized then we had never asked him to join us or questioned his allegiance to the Prime. He had simply fallen into line with us. Now I could see what he had been trying to hide. His dedication to protecting Aurora was no longer about his belief in Darian, or his desire to please him. He wanted only to fulfill his role, and to ensure Aurora was safe. I wondered how much he knew that he hadn't yet shared with us, and what might have pushed him to leave the palace behind and join us.

  “Could it have been the Shade?” Aurora asked.

  That hadn't even been a consideration in my mind until then. Damn it. My brain had managed to fold up the Shade into a nice little square and tuck it away into some dark corner where it wasn't going to be dealt with for a while as we contended with Lunaris. Apparently, that wasn't going to work out. Now we had to deal with the reality that there were two groups chasing us down.

  All in all, a good day.

  “It could,” Jaxxim admitted. “By now the Prime has likely noticed I haven't reported for work or checked in with him. If they have any indication that I'm with you, or helped you, they could be targeting me.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Jaxxim turned to me, his eyes heavy with the realization of what he just said.

  “Hayden, I'm sorry.”

  “Jaxxim?” Aurora said.

  His gaze moved to her.

  “I couldn't tell you. I'm sorry, Aurora.”

  “Couldn't tell us what?” I asked.

  Jaxxim's expression hardened as he struggled with what he was going to say. It was like he couldn't make the right words form themselves on his tongue. Finally, I shook my head.

  “It doesn't matter. We need to decide what comes next. Obviously staying here isn't a safe option anymore.”

  “No, it's not,” Jaxxim agreed.

  His body swayed slightly and he pressed his fingertips over his eyes for a second.

  “Jaxxim?” Aurora took a step toward him. “Are you okay?”

  “I'm fine.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We need to get going.”

  “Not yet. I need to check something.”

  Jaxxim started across the living room and I fell into step behind him, half out of curiosity of where he might be going and what he was checking, and half so I could try to catch him should he fall over in-route. A door at the end of the hallway looked like a closet and stood out against the rest of the damaged apartment as being almost intact. Jaxxim opened the door and pushed apart a row of hanging clothes to step through. I expected him to take a step and then come back, but he disappeared completely through the clothes. Seconds passed and he didn't show back up.

  “Aurora?” I called into the living room.

  She came down the hallway.

  “Where did Jaxxim go?”

  “Narnia apparently,” I told her, gesturing toward the closet.

  A second later a crossbow yanked down a jacket as it sailed through the closet and clattered to the floor at my feet.

  “I think you pissed off the closet,” Aurora said.

  Another bow, quickly followed by a sheathed dagger, joined the first. Walking around the growing pile of weaponry, I ducked through the clothes. A section of the wall at the back of the closet had been moved out of place, revealing a small room beyond.

  “Don't throw anything else,” I said, standing off the side for a second before poking my head into the space.

  It was nothing short of an arsenal. Piles of weapons cluttered the floor. Swords leaned in the corners. Hooks and shelves on the walls held every type of implement of combat I could possibly imagine and quite a few more that never crossed my mind.

  “Grab something,” Jaxxim told me.

  “Sure.”

  His hands shook as he carried an armful of weapons out of the closet, and I followed with a bow over my shoulder and a longsword in each hand.

  “What the hell is all this?” Aurora asked.

  “We have to be armed, don't we?” Jaxxim asked.

  He shot a look in her direction before ducking back into the hidden room.

  “You've had this just sitting in the back of your closet all this time?”

  “I started collecting a while ago.”

  “A collection is spoons from different cities or those creepy little clown statue things. Maybe autographs if you care about people. Not a secret cupboard full of torture implements.”

  “That's the book Rowling cut out of the series,” I interjected.

  “Look,” Jaxxim said, pausing just outside the closet, “what has to be done, has to be done. Nothing else matters anymore.” He looked down at the pile of weapons at his feet. “This is probably enough. Let's get this outside.”

  “Do you have a car here?” Aurora asked. “I don't think all of this is going to fit in Stephana's car if we don't want one of us surfing on top.”

  Jaxxim nodded.

  “It's in the back.”

  Scooping up a few of the weapons, Aurora headed back down the hallway. I reached for a sword and saw Jaxxim lean back against the side of the closet door frame, his eyes squeezed shut.

  “Not too much longer,” I told him. “We'll find somewhere to stop soon.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at me. Without responding, he started out of the apartment. Ashe, Aurora, and I were the only ones not injured, but we knew it would be best if we had both cars with us. Having multiple forms of transportation would enable us to move around more easily, splitting up if it became necessary. Most of the weapons went into Jaxxim's car, and he got into the passenger seat with Ashe behind the wheel and Ty stretched across the backseat. The rest of us got back into Stephana's car and waited for Ashe to pull out of the small gravel parking area behind the building so we could follow wherever Jaxxim was instructing her. My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white and ached. Soon we left the city behind and we're moving through the outskirts. Getting away from the apartment was important, but the idea of going too far away from the city worried me. We needed a place to stop and a doctor as soon as possible, and the further we traveled, the longer it would take. Finally, a flickering neon sign ahead of us indicated something in the long stretch of desolate area. We got closer and I could see it was a rundown, hole in the wall motel.

  It was perfect.

  The tires kicked up dust and dirt as the cars pulled into the parking area. Even though it was empty, we parked in the farthest back corner, staying in the shadows. Jaxxim's car was the familiar black of the other Shade vehicles, and it wasn't too much of a leap to imagine if people were tracking us, they'd be able to easily recognize Stephana's car. At least this way, it wouldn't be easy to see us from the road. Glancing into the back seat, I made sure Bex was still with us. Stephana had taken over holding the bandages to his stomach, and now they were soaked in blood. His color had drained completely, and his body was shaking, but his eyes were open, and when he looked at me, he offered a single nod of his head as if to tell me he was still there.

  “Be right back,” I told them.

  A grimy, potentially forgotten swimming pool behind the motel could have been home to any number of swamp creatures, but going past it was the only option to get to the back door. Nothing rose up out of the scum covered water as I passed, which seemed like a bonus considering how the day was unfolding. The inside of the lobby was as dark and quiet as I expected it to be, but the man behind the desk flashed me a bright smile as I approached. It could have been good customer service and years in hospitality training. It could have been I was the only living being he'd seen in weeks.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  It wasn't until right then the realization that I didn't have money or an ID with me hit. This was going to be one of those fake it ‘til you make it situations.

  “Yes,” I told him. “My group and I have been traveling for a while, and we'd really like to take a rest for the night. We stumbled on your lovely establishment here, and we're wondering if you happen to have any vacancies available.”

  Muscle memory molded my face into the publicity grin manufactured over countless press conferences, meetings with team executives, and sponsored parties. It had been a long time since I'd had to whip one of them out, but it seemed to have the same effect. The man behind the counter smiled even bigger.

  “You're in luck,” he said. “I do have some available rooms tonight.”

  “Fantastic news,” I said. “If you have them, I would like to book three.”

  He flipped through the pages of a huge ledger in front of them with all the dedication and concentration of someone who legitimately thought they might not have three rooms available in the motel. Finally, he looked up at me.

  “I can do that,” he said. “Let's just get you registered.”

  Here it was. This is where the fancy tap dancing was going to have to come in.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Before the clerk even had a chance to ask me for my identification or a deposit for the rooms, Aurora came down the hallway into the lobby. His eyes lifted to her, and in that instant, I could have been the Abominable Snowman standing in front of him and it wouldn't have mattered.

  “Good news,” I said cheerfully. “He has three rooms available. We're just working on the registration.”

  Her eyes met mine and acknowledgement flickered across them. Understood.

  19

  Ashe and I were helping Bex out of the car when Aurora came back across the parking lot toward us. She held a keycard out to me.

  “I'm not even going to ask how you did that.”

  “No need to,” she said. “I requested rooms on the back of the building. Hopefully that'll make it easier to get everybody and the weapons inside without being noticed.”

  “Being noticed by who?” Ashe asked. “If you haven't noticed, we are so far out in the middle of nowhere, the residents of nowhere don't know where we are.”

  “Don't ever underestimate the Shade or Lunaris,” Ty said. “If there's anything we've learned from all this so far, that's it.”

  “Ty’s right,” I said. “We can't let ourselves get complacent. That's what they're waiting for. They want us to put our guard down and not pay attention so they can come after us again. They've figured out by now they don't know everything we have at our disposal. Hell, we don't know everything we have at our disposal.”

  My mind went back to the industrial site and the droplets of acid that fell from the sky and melted the fighters in front of us. It was the first time I really let myself think through the reality of that. Artemis's words had sunk in deeply. He didn't believe I had it in me to do what needed to be done to destroy him, and he was more than eager to point that out. Facing the men who were chasing Ashe was the first time I watched somebody die because of me. It needed to be done, but it also confirmed my position that there were other ways to accomplish our goals. We didn't need to be the ones who slashed and burned just for the sake of getting it to the end of the conflict. There'd been enough horror. Now was the time for that to be different.

  “Let's get the guys in first,” Aurora said. “Then we can come back for the weapons. They shouldn't be left out here, and we want to make sure they are easily accessible when we need them.”

  She went ahead of us, checking the key card in her hand to make sure she was going to the right door. Waving the card through the reader, she waited for the light to turn green.

  “Is anyone else even faintly surprised this place has key cards?” I asked. “I was kind of expecting a massive brass skeleton key type situation.”

  Aurora shot me a look over her shoulder and pushed the door open.

  “Let me go in first,” I said.

  Aurora stepped back to help support Bex and I walked into the dark room. What Ty had said was absolutely true. There was no way for any of us to really trust any situation, and a sagging old motel may be the perfect cover for Lunaris. If they were hiding in the shadows of the room waiting to attack, it was going to be me they went after first. My hand slid across the wall just inside the door, but there was no light switch. Moving further into the room, I tried to see through the gloom.

  “Aurora, what are the chances I have laser vision or something lurking around in my brain?”

  “Probably not great,” she said. “But I wouldn't put it completely past you. You've done a lot of things I've never seen before.”

  “...K.”

  The wall fell away under my hand and dipped into a void I could only imagine was the bathroom. The next section of wall had the light switch and pressing it filled the space with yellow light that looked almost as dusty as all the surfaces throughout the room. Fortunately, motels in the Underworld didn't seem terribly different than the roadside dives of the other side, and it only took a few seconds to peek behind the curtains, kick the platform of the beds bolted to the floor, and take a quick tour of the bathroom that had barely enough space in it to turn around twice.

  “How does it look?” Aurora asked.

  “Exactly as you thought it did, but a little bit worse. But it's a place to stay for the night, and that's really what matters right now.” Taking Jaxxim under his arm, I helped him into the room. “Let's put Jaxxim and the weapons here.”

  Aurora rushed ahead and stripped the grimy-looking navy paisley bedspread and the scratchy green blanket under it. The sheets looked mercifully clean as Jaxxim tumbled down onto them. He groaned as his head hit the pillow.

  “Relax,” Aurora said. “We're going to get someone here to help you as soon as we can. We'll be back soon with the weapons. Is there anything else we can get for you?”

  His head went back and forth almost imperceptibly, and Aurora patted his leg to comfort him. We left the room and moved on to the one controlled by the key card she had handed me. I repeated the sweep through the space with Aurora following close behind to strip both beds. Once Bex and Ty were resting, the three women and I moved on to the third room.

  “Stephana, how are you feeling?” Ashe asked.

  “Better,” she said. “Sore. Really gross.”

  The women laughed.

  “Head into the bathroom.” Aurora directed her toward the open door. “We'll help you get cleaned up.”

  “I'm going to unload the weapons and check on Bex,” I told them.

  The world around me was sharp and in more intense focus when I stepped back out onto the cracking cement pool deck. Something shifted in the green water and curiosity drew me to the edge. Faded blue paint differentiated the shallow end from the deep like a whispered warning that if I tumbled forward it would be a long drop to the slimy bottom. If something didn't swallow me whole first.

  Breaking out of the trance of the murky pool, I continued to the car and hauled out as many of the weapons as would fit in my arms. Aurora had propped the door to Jaxxim's room open on the deadbolt so a well-placed kick was enough to open it. I dropped the armful on the bed and went out for another round.

 

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