Shadow Fall Read online

  Contents

  Shadow Fall

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part II

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Thank You For Reading

  Check out other books from Blaze

  Shadow Fall

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  ISBN print: 978-0-9970104-9-7

  ISBN ebook: 978-0-9970104-8-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016945100

  Copyright © 2016 Audrey Grey

  http://audreygrey.com/

  Cover design by Kimberley Marsot

  http://www.kimg-design.com/

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use materials from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permissions must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Blaze Publishing, LLC

  64 Melvin Drive

  Fredericksburg, VA 22406

  Visit us at www.blazepub.com

  First Edition: November 2016

  To Angela, my consummate reader and better half.

  Prologue

  The asteroid that will destroy the earth is named Pandora. Some Royalist high up in the Emperor’s court thought they were being clever, stealing the name from the stories our ancestors once only whispered about the gods.

  My mother repeated Pandora’s myth so many times I have it memorized: Zeus, the mightiest of mighty, formed Pandora out of clay. Cunning and beautiful, she was mankind’s destiny—and eventually their downfall.

  Dig past the irony, and you’ll find admiration. She always liked powerful, destructive things, my mother. Which explains why she never really cared much for me. A Bronze. Born to a Gold mother and a Bronze father.

  Born to be Chosen and ordinary.

  Born to slave in the factories and marry a prince.

  Born to love the light and languish in the dark.

  I’ve always known my world would end. I’ve known the exact day, the exact hour, the exact minute. But no one has ever explained to me why.

  The Royalists say that the gods, angered by the Everlasting War and bombings, have decided to punish us.

  Those on the other side, the Fienian Rebels, claim that the Emperor somehow harnessed the technology he keeps from us to conjure the asteroid. After all, it is the asteroid that allowed the Royalists and their promise of salvation to gain control of the last remaining Fienian Rebel cities.

  They don’t mention salvation anymore, though. No one does.

  Darkness begets beautiful, wondrous things—my mother’s words. And Cronus, the Titan son of Gaia and Uranus, was forced to slay his father, the blood from his wicked deed covering his mother, who spun and spun, each droplet birthing giants and nymphs into the world.

  My mother assured me the asteroid was a gift from the gods that would change my life for the better. I was a bead of blood, borne from tragedy, destined to change our dying world.

  I was Chosen.

  For someone who prided herself on always being right, my mother sure picked an inconvenient time to be so wrong.

  Chapter One

  I am more earth than person now. More dirt than flesh, rock than bone, mud than blood. In the tunnels, in the darkness, I have become something less than human.

  I have to get out of here!

  I carve another useless handful of dirt from my tomb. It’s a wasted effort. There’s no way I can claw myself out of the pit beneath Rhine Prison. Even if my hands are forged from the strong metalworking bones of my ancestors. Hands meant to hammer steel into blades and work precious gold into the sigils of the High Colored Houses.

  But I have to do something. Anything to take my mind off what’s happening above.

  Is she here yet? Does Max see her too? Is he afraid? The breath catches in my chest. Is he even alive?

  Rage bubbles inside me. I fall to my knees, try to scream out the pain, fists throbbing as they hammer the tunnel wall. Max is all I have. If I admit the truth—that there is no way my brother has survived out there alone—I will have nothing left to fight for.

  My chest shudders with silent, tearless sobs. The night that wrecked my life comes in mangled bits and pieces. My father’s blood, oily-black, unspooling down the stairs. The Centurions charging, their boot steps like a thousand thunderclaps rattling my spine as they splattered shiny red stars onto the white wall. The terrified expression on Max’s face as I ripped him from my bed and we fled the only home we had ever known.

  But you left me, Max’s childish voice accuses.

  My ravaged lips split wide. “You were hungry . . . so hungry . . .”

  We were starving. I knew there were Centurions around the market that day. But I couldn’t bear one more night curled together for warmth as my little brother moaned for food, the sharp, protruding points of his spine pricking my sternum.

  A horrible beggar and worse thief, they caught me before I could even claim a bite of the pilfered loaf warming my pocket. We had only haunted the streets for a month. Even so, I must have looked so different from the Chosen girl with the Gold mother that the Centurions assumed I was just another Bronze girl hiding from her factory duties, or perhaps shirking conscription.

  Some days I wish they had recognized me. I would be dead, gloriously, numbingly dead, not eking out this miserable joke of an existence. Not dining on rats. Not tormented by ghosts and always, always afraid.

  “Help me,” I wail, fighting out of my memory. “Please! I can’t do this anymore!”

  I’m losing it. For the fifth time this morning.

  Or is it night?

  Deep inside the earth, there are no mornings. No evenings. No seasons or baby brothers, and no asteroids named after the gods. Only time. Time to dig and pretend I’m actually accomplishing something. Time to cry and feel sorry for myself. Time to scratch at the lice wriggling through my nest of hair.

  Time to go full on crazy.

  I call it the Doom. That feeling that takes hold, tangles my insides,
nibbles my ribs, and carves any remaining hope from my heart.

  A noise shatters the stillness, and my breath catches. Frozen, I listen for a few seconds, but all I hear is the terrified pounding of my heart. Don’t be a wimp, Graystone, I scold myself, thinking like the voices the sound was a figment of my imagination.

  Now another sound creeps from the tunnels, almost like muffled whispering—but definitely real.

  Sometimes, when I hear them searching for me, I pretend that I am Persephone, imprisoned in the Underworld, and the monsters that seek me are only Hades and his minions. They do not want to hurt me; they want to make me their immortal queen.

  The monsters’ whispers wriggle along the walls. They have finally found me, and they will not place a crown upon my head.

  Now my digging has more purpose behind it. I claw and tear pockets of rock-pitted earth from the wall. Dirt patters quietly against my bare feet. I have a just-woken-up-falling feeling, as if I’ve opened my eyes and tumbled into a nightmare. A worse one, if that’s even possible. I am a Bronze inside a pit full of monsters.

  A Bronze with a secret.

  The sound of something scurrying by my feet makes me jump, but it’s only Bramble. The machine-like sound of his metal legs scraping together gives me a tiny bit of comfort.

  Shaped like a spider, Bramble has six jointed legs, a spherical body, and pinhole sensors affixed to the top of his head that glow red. I found the prison sensor beneath a heap of rags, one of his antennae nearly broken. I straightened his sensor and cleaned the dirt from his joints, expecting he would go back to counting Pit Leeches, but instead he followed me into the tunnels. Soon after, he brought Duchess to me. A slightly newer-model sensor, she was harder to fix.

  “They found us, B,” I whisper.

  Bramble lets loose an angry barrage of chirps.

  “Where’s your sister?”

  Duchess is the opposite of Bramble. Headstrong and independent, she’s most likely exploring the tunnels.

  Before Bramble can respond, taunts invade the stillness.

  “Hey, Digger Girl, there’s nowhere left to hide.” The first voice, clearly Rafe’s, lodges in the pit of my stomach. Which means his cutthroat companion, Ripper, will be right behind him. She got the name because she likes to cut things. No, not things. People.

  “Digger, Digger, in the dark,” Ripper coos. “Digger, Digger, ain’t too smart. Got her a hole that she fell into. Got her a grave that she’ll die in too.”

  I nudge Bramble away with my foot. “Hide!”

  A soft golden mist slithers along the floor. As my hands then wrists then legs come into view, I grow dizzy with emotion. It’s the first real light I have seen in years.

  Two shadows sprout from the floor. One waifish and still, the other hulking and twitchy. They smell of smoke and rot. The headlamp banded to Rafe’s forehead bobs side-to-side, illuminating my home for the last seven years, a six-by-six-foot hole in the earth.

  “Got your filthy little nest here, Digger Girl?” Ripper says, tossing something—a half-eaten rat carcass—at Rafe’s boot. “Watch out, Rafe, she like to bite. A savage, she is.”

  A dull smile livens the slackened flesh of Rafe’s face. He gnashes the air, his few remaining teeth clanking together. “Well, I bite back.”

  “I’ll do more than bite,” I hiss, pulling out the wooden shard I use to kill rats. I thrust it out low and center and hope they don’t notice how it trembles in my hand.

  The last time I saw Ripper, she was leading me to the catacombs, where the creatures that infest the pit wait every few days for their sacrifice.

  Somehow I got away. Now, though, there is nowhere to run. I will have to fight, and I’m not sure I can do that.

  I hate my fear. The way my body goes all rubbery and weak.

  Calm down. Form a plan. They will both rush me, so I decide to go after Ripper first. Rafe specializes in blunt force trauma. In close quarters, Ripper and her blade will do the quickest damage.

  Ripper darts forward, silver flashing. I grunt. Tingly fire zips up my side. Ripper’s nearly toothless mouth is yawned, her chest wobbling with excited, hungry breaths.

  She must have stabbed me, but my body masks the pain with adrenaline. It needs me to keep going. To fight back.

  Fight back, Maia Graystone!

  This time Ripper lunges with the knife aimed dead center at my stomach. I twist, catching her by the arm and trying to throw her off balance. Impossibly she squirms from my grasp, all muscle and bone, and springs for me again at lightning speed. Her knife jabs methodically at my belly.

  Stab.

  Stab.

  Kicking and clawing, I recoil backward into a sweaty wall of hard muscle. A hot, rancid breath warms my neck.

  Rafe.

  My body goes numb. The Doom is setting in. Both my shoulders are viced between Rafe’s cement grip. Pain cords through my chest as he squeezes, bones cracking.

  I blink. Ripper’s knife twirls inches from my face; slippery light twinkles along its bloody length. “Hold her good, Rafe.”

  Rafe grunts behind me. “She all carved up, they not gonna pay.”

  I barely have time to wonder who would be desperate enough to pay these two homicidal savages to retrieve me when Ripper’s knife slips under my nose. Her eyes are gleaming. “Just the nose. She don’t need it.”

  “Ripper, I take her without you just as easy as with you.” The pressure eases from my shoulders. Behind me, a hollow object—probably Rafe’s favorite metal pipe—clanks against flesh as he passes it between his meaty palms.

  Whatever they are being paid to collect me, it’s enough for them to turn on each other. Impossibly my situation has just gotten worse. Because only someone outside, someone Royal, can offer something like that.

  Which means the Emperor has finally found me.

  My muscles quiver. It won’t take long for one to snuff the other. But all I need are a few seconds to disappear into the earthen maze just beyond that hole. I prepare to run.

  At least I’m good at that.

  But my fragile hope evaporates as Ripper’s knife-blade whispers back into her shirtsleeve. “No worry, yah, Rafey-boy?”

  Before I can protest, Rafe strings a corded rope around my neck, looping it over my arms and legs and back to him so that the slightest pressure causes me to choke.

  I know the rope system Rafe has set up is a mistake the second we enter the hole. The tunnels are a snaking maze of vertical and lateral burrows, laced with dead ends and circular passageways. Most are a tight fit for me, meaning that Rafe must be barely squeezing through. Because of the rope connecting us, I am forced to rest my manacled hands on the backs of his legs, making it hard for him to move and impossible for me to keep enough slack in the rope to breathe. The faster he tries to move, the more entangled I become.

  Like an animal caught in a trap, Rafe goes berserk. He lunges forward, grunting wildly, breaking off large chunks of earth that pile on top of us. The rope bites under my jaw and rips my head forward. My lungs scream for air. Air!

  Just as the blackness swallows my eyesight, the walls release me. As if on springs, my arms shoot up and I slip four fingers beneath the rope constricting my neck. A trickle of air burns its way down my throat and into my lungs, clearing a pinpoint of vision. Rafe careens forward, and we crumple into a sweaty pile. My head, pressed into his sweat-soaked chest, rocks up and down with his panicky breathing.

  My eyes follow Rafe’s headlamp as it hops around the small cavity, briefly revealing another passageway near the roof, and my mouth goes dry. If Rafe forces me to follow him into that hole, we are all dead.

  Ripper, who has slipped into the shaft, is quietly studying Rafe. “Lemme lead, Rafe.”

  “Can’t . . .” Rafe’s strangled breath cuts out. His white egg eyes twinkle with panic as his gaze rolls between her and the hole. “Can’t breathe.”

  The Doom. It’s found him too.

  Ripper slides carefully to his right, where the shadows ar
e the wettest, the darkest.

  I know Rafe is about to lunge because his entire body coils. Although I’m pretty sure my neck will snap the second he springs, I squat anyway, readying my legs to jump with him. I have a plan in place on the off chance I survive.

  Get the knife. Cut the rope. Go for Rafe first, under the ribs. Try for the kidneys or liver. Then free your legs. Get the knife . . .

  There’s a sharp puncturing noise, like ripping fabric. Rafe gives a groaning sigh and melts to the floor, forcing me to my knees.

  Ripper resolves from the shadows. Wiping her bloody blade on her thigh, she bends down, retrieves the headlamp, and slashes the rope from Rafe’s body.

  A gunmetal flash draws my eye. Duchess is pressed hesitantly against an outcropping rock protruding from the wall. Rafe’s metal pipe peeks from the pincer grip of her collecting arm. I shake my head and mouth no, but she inches determinably closer, her lights dimmed to tiny glowing stars.

  Always the gutsy one, my Duchess.

  Ripper is distracted. I overcome my fear and allow myself a sliver of hope. This may be my only chance to escape. “You were friends,” I say to Ripper. “And you killed him.” While I try to keep her talking, I am slowly leaning for the pipe. Duchess sinks low and scuttles a few inches closer. She is shaking. I spread my fingers in anticipation.

  “You know nothing, Digger Girl.” Ripper fixes her dead gaze on me; behind her heavy lids, her all-pupil eyes shine liquid black.

  Cold metal brushes my fingertips. They vice shut—but there’s nothing there.

  The pipe thuds softly to the ground.

  Something changes in Ripper’s expression. Her head swivels down to the pipe, back up to me. “Digger Girl, she found herself a weapon, found herself a little hope.”

  I’m kneeling. I can pick it up—if I want to. Duchess is urging the pipe forward with her leg.

  “Now watcha gonna do with that?”

  “Nothing.” My hand curls into a rock. We both know that even if I pick it up, it will be useless inside my inept fingers.

  The kick happens so fast I barely have time to flinch. A spray of dirt pelts my face, followed by a dull thud against the wall behind me. Duchess, dazed on her back, emits a string of pitiful chirps as Ripper bends down and digs her knife into the fissure on Duchess’s belly. There’s a final release of high-pitched beeps, similar to a scream. Then Ripper twists the knife and drags it down Duchess’s insides, and Duchess goes quiet.