Read Online Dark City (The Order of Shadows Book 1) by Kit Hallows - Free Book Online
Authors: Kit Hallows
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photographed the titles, in case I needed to refer back to them later, then I stepped into the center of the room. It was time to do a little traveling.
The crystals crackled as I pulled them from my bag and clutched them in my hands. I shivered as the electric-like charges ran through the palms of my hands and spread through my body. I began to intone one of the last spells my trainer at the Organization had shown me.
In a way it was like time travel, but really it involved projecting the spirit form back into the past. Just like Tudor's trap had done, only this time I was in control.
The magic continued to pulse from the crystals, running through my veins like liquid fire. I shuddered and closed my eyes to focus and harness its power.
Silence fell over the world and all I could hear was the beat of my heart, and the thump of blood in my ears. Then I allowed myself to stray from my suit of flesh and bone, and drift out into the room around me.
I turned and saw myself standing there, eyes closed, hands open, the crystals glowing in my palms. Time swept around me with a roar and a crash, as a sea of gaseous swirling colors enveloped me. I waited until I found a twisting grey stream that ran back into the past.
I stepped into it and watched like a ghost as the apartment fell empty. Night became day, and then night once more. Then the lights came on in the very same room where my future unobservable self waited along a finite filament of time. Cops and forensics went about the painstaking business of scouring for evidence and I was like a fly on the wall.
The scene passed in time-lapse, and soon the torches and lamps faded and night filled the empty room with murk and shadows.
I stepped into the stream again and went further back, until finally I arrived at the night of the murder.
There was a presence now, two people. One in the hallway. It was the tenant, or soon to be victim, and the other...I could feel their essence, but yet...not fully.
A blur of movement came from the window, a dark hooded figure on the fire escape. Its silhouette was slender. But I could not tell if it was a man or a woman beneath the long black cloak.
I sailed across the room, passed through the glass and merged with the mysterious figure.
It was like stepping from a steaming hot shower into an icy storm.
Shock and panic jittered through my spirit form, it took everything I had not to slip away, to be thrust back toward the future, back to the time and place where my body stood, entranced.
Who or whatever they were, they were as cold as the grave. I could hear no sense of self inside them, no heartbeat, no emotions.
Just intent.
An intent to murder.
They glanced down at the window and the magical locks sealing it shut. The locks were bewitched, even the slightest move to unbind them would alert the tenant. He was almost certainly a skilled magician, and who knew what else.
I could read the assassin's thoughts, limited though they were in sense its calculations. Its prey was armed and powerful, it had magic. Old magic. While the killer had no powers, it was ruled by the sorcery that commanded it, allowed it to move and think in its limited terms.
The assassin stood at the window, as if waiting for something. What?
A distant voice flashed inside its mind, a whisper. The sound sent a jolt of icy cold horror through my soul. It was a man's voice, soft, well spoken, powerful. And familiar?
Whispering instructions directly into the killer's mind.
The assassin intoned the words, mirroring the voice as it ran a hand over the window disarming the spells. Then it watched as the magical traps faded and winked out.
The locks flicked open, just as they had for me, only this time they were virtually silent. The puppeteer that controlled this deadly automaton wielded magic far more powerful and accomplished than mine.
I was little more than a helpless observer as the assassin slid the window open and climbed inside, its footfall silent, its mind
The crystals crackled as I pulled them from my bag and clutched them in my hands. I shivered as the electric-like charges ran through the palms of my hands and spread through my body. I began to intone one of the last spells my trainer at the Organization had shown me.
In a way it was like time travel, but really it involved projecting the spirit form back into the past. Just like Tudor's trap had done, only this time I was in control.
The magic continued to pulse from the crystals, running through my veins like liquid fire. I shuddered and closed my eyes to focus and harness its power.
Silence fell over the world and all I could hear was the beat of my heart, and the thump of blood in my ears. Then I allowed myself to stray from my suit of flesh and bone, and drift out into the room around me.
I turned and saw myself standing there, eyes closed, hands open, the crystals glowing in my palms. Time swept around me with a roar and a crash, as a sea of gaseous swirling colors enveloped me. I waited until I found a twisting grey stream that ran back into the past.
I stepped into it and watched like a ghost as the apartment fell empty. Night became day, and then night once more. Then the lights came on in the very same room where my future unobservable self waited along a finite filament of time. Cops and forensics went about the painstaking business of scouring for evidence and I was like a fly on the wall.
The scene passed in time-lapse, and soon the torches and lamps faded and night filled the empty room with murk and shadows.
I stepped into the stream again and went further back, until finally I arrived at the night of the murder.
There was a presence now, two people. One in the hallway. It was the tenant, or soon to be victim, and the other...I could feel their essence, but yet...not fully.
A blur of movement came from the window, a dark hooded figure on the fire escape. Its silhouette was slender. But I could not tell if it was a man or a woman beneath the long black cloak.
I sailed across the room, passed through the glass and merged with the mysterious figure.
It was like stepping from a steaming hot shower into an icy storm.
Shock and panic jittered through my spirit form, it took everything I had not to slip away, to be thrust back toward the future, back to the time and place where my body stood, entranced.
Who or whatever they were, they were as cold as the grave. I could hear no sense of self inside them, no heartbeat, no emotions.
Just intent.
An intent to murder.
They glanced down at the window and the magical locks sealing it shut. The locks were bewitched, even the slightest move to unbind them would alert the tenant. He was almost certainly a skilled magician, and who knew what else.
I could read the assassin's thoughts, limited though they were in sense its calculations. Its prey was armed and powerful, it had magic. Old magic. While the killer had no powers, it was ruled by the sorcery that commanded it, allowed it to move and think in its limited terms.
The assassin stood at the window, as if waiting for something. What?
A distant voice flashed inside its mind, a whisper. The sound sent a jolt of icy cold horror through my soul. It was a man's voice, soft, well spoken, powerful. And familiar?
Whispering instructions directly into the killer's mind.
The assassin intoned the words, mirroring the voice as it ran a hand over the window disarming the spells. Then it watched as the magical traps faded and winked out.
The locks flicked open, just as they had for me, only this time they were virtually silent. The puppeteer that controlled this deadly automaton wielded magic far more powerful and accomplished than mine.
I was little more than a helpless observer as the assassin slid the window open and climbed inside, its footfall silent, its mind
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