Jack Staples and the City of Shadows Read online

  “Okay,” Alexia shouted. “It’s time to fight back. It’s time to show the Assassin he has not broken us. We are stronger than he could imagine and we will win this war!” Alexia was sure the animals didn’t understand her words, but they did understand that something was happening. Alexia whispered into Ollie’s ear and the elephant walked over to a thick lever and pulled it with his trunk.

  As the door to every cage in the cavern sprung open, Ollie pushed forward and galloped toward the stairs. Alexia inserted a stone into her sling; behind her Juno shouted and Adeline squealed with delight.

  Chapter 25

  TO LOSE A BATTLE

  Ollie rushed up a wide stairwell as Alexia lay low on his back. The ceiling was barely high enough for the elephant to run without hitting his head.

  Juno and Adeline followed close, and behind them came a stampede of thousands upon thousands of animals. At the top of the stairwell, Ollie galloped into a mass of dark servants packed into the cramped passageway. The mighty elephant swung his trunk and thrust his tusks as he plowed through the crowd like an avalanche. The Bengal tiger pounced on any dark servant still standing, as Adeline’s moose kicked its hind legs and swung its antlers at the creatures.

  The Shadow Souled shrieked as the herd charged through them. Ollie crashed down the passage, yet Alexia knew he couldn’t keep it up for long. If the elephant slowed, the dark servants would overwhelm him.

  Just ahead Alexia saw balls of white flame exploding into the enemy. Yes! She whispered encouragement in Ollie’s ear as the elephant lunged forward. Within seconds Alexia and her menagerie were standing before Mrs. Dumphry.

  Behind Mrs. Dumphry, Andreal battled a never-ending stream of the Shadow Souled. Yet now that Mrs. Dumphry was free, she turned and sent a wall of flame speeding into them. The Shadow Army shrieked as they began to flee the corridor.

  Alexia’s breath caught when she saw Wild lying with his head against the stone wall. He was incredibly pale and bleeding from multiple wounds. “Is he … Is Wild—” She couldn’t finish.

  Wild opened his eyes and looked up at her, blinking once, twice. “Took you long enough,” he said, and grinned. “I got so tired of waiting I decided to take a nap.”

  Alexia rolled her eyes. The boy is impossible, she thought happily. Arthur was still fast asleep on the stony floor. Just then, Aias appeared in the stairwell. He was followed by Josiah, Summer, Benaiah, and the thousands of prisoners.

  Mrs. Dumphry wiped sweat from her brow. “It seems you have found even more of our friends,” she said as she observed the Clear Eyes. “There is no time to dally. The Shadow Army is fully conscious, and every one of them is spilling from the arena. If the streets aren’t blocked already, they soon will be. Lead us into the streets, my girl,” she said to Alexia, “and try to find a way out of this city!”

  Alexia felt a rush of adrenaline as she whispered into Ollie’s ear. The elephant lurched upward as an image of a raging river bursting through a dam formed in Alexia’s mind. She had no idea what it meant, but she was sure the image had come from Ollie. Within seconds they were crashing out of the passageway and into the wall of Shadow Souled who were spilling into the streets.

  Thirty minutes later, Alexia was weary beyond words. Ollie had charged through twenty blocks of the enemy. Yet every street was packed, and before long the poor elephant had stumbled and fallen. By the time Ollie rose again, there were far too many dark servants filling the street to continue forward.

  Ollie fought valiantly, slamming his tusks into the enemy and kicking them away as Alexia stood on his back and sent stone after stone flying into the never-ending stream of dark servants.

  Before long, she was pulled from the elephant’s back and had to make use of a sword she’d stolen from one of the Shadow Souled. The fighting was far too cramped to use her sling. Yet no matter how many dark servants she took down, there were always more to come. And inch by inch the army of Awakened was pressed inward as human and animal fell beneath the flood of darkness.

  The battle was unlike anything Alexia had imagined. Many of the freed prisoners had Soulprints of their own. Vines sprang up out of nowhere, wrapping around the enemy and flinging them away. Tornadoes of snow and ice blasted through the streets, freezing Shadow Souled in an instant.

  Impossible things were happening all around as alleyways filled with crystalline water, gushing into the streets and slamming into the enemy. Walls appeared out of nowhere, surrounding fifty dark servants at a time and locking them inside.

  A few animals also seemed to have Soulprints. She saw a zebra turn the front half of its body into stone and smash into the enemy. Then there was an armadillo that grew a metallic shell and curled itself into a ball to roll beneath the Shadow Souled and knock their feet out from under them.

  Yet even with five thousand Awakened and twenty thousand animals, it was obvious they would not win this battle. They wouldn’t even come close. For every dark servant they dispatched, another hundred remained.

  Alexia dispatched a mammoth beast that was part elephant and part octopus. From the corner of her eye, she saw Aias lock blades with the traitor Miel. Alexia hadn’t seen the woman since she’d been kidnapped from the palace in London. Miel moved like a viper, but she was no match for Aias. The one-armed warrior spun backward and knocked the woman to the ground.

  Something slammed into the middle of the street, drawing Alexia’s attention. Stone and dirt went flying as someone let out an impossibly loud scream. For a moment the battle stopped as every dark servant and Awakened turned to see what new evil had arrived. Alexia gaped as she saw the Assassin holding a fresh wound in his side. Sweat poured from him as black blood spilled onto the ground.

  Lying on his back before the Assassin was Jack Staples. He was gasping for breath and trying to rise.

  Four minutes earlier

  The Assassin rocketed through the air as Jack clung to his back. Jack had managed to keep hold of Ashandar in one hand as he wrapped both legs and his other arm around the Assassin. Gritting his teeth, he let go with his arm and held on tightly with his legs, riding the Assassin like a horse. Jack grabbed Ashandar with both hands and was about to stab the Assassin in the back when the Assassin spun like a top. Ashandar flew out of Jack’s grasp. He grew dizzy, watching it fall to the city streets far below.

  The Assassin hurled Jack across the sky, but he didn’t fall far before the Assassin slammed into him, holding him by the neck and placing his other hand over Jack’s heart.

  The Assassin slowed, then stopped in midair, hovering in the clouds far above the City of Shadows. Jack’s heart burned and he felt his life slipping away. The fires from the Assassin’s eyes were as hot as a furnace, and a rapturous smile parted his lips.

  “This is why you were born, boy,” the Assassin said. “This is your purpose. To die at my hands.” The area around Jack’s heart was on fire as the Assassin dug his fingers into his chest. The edges of his vision darkened. Dimly, Jack heard the ringing of bells and surrendered to them. He had no idea where or when they would go, and he didn’t care. At this moment, it was the only way he knew to fight back.

  They landed in the Brazilian rain forest. The Assassin glanced at the changed landscape. “No matter where you run, you cannot escape me!” he scoffed. “Your death will end this war, Jack Staples.”

  Jack hovered on the edge of consciousness. The world grew darker by the second, and he could see little more than the raging fires in the Assassin’s eyes.

  “But I will not stop with you. I will destroy everyone you know and love. Your father and brother, your friends …”

  Wait! Jack had heard these words before. There! He saw himself, the Jack from the past. The other Jack wore a blindfold and held Ashandar in both hands. He moved with a fluid grace and twisted the black blade upward—into the Assassin’s side. “No!” The Assassin gasped as the Jack from the past screamed “No!”
alongside him.

  And as the other Jack stumbled and fell, Jack Staples embraced the ring of time and brought the Assassin back to the City of Shadows.

  The Assassin dropped Jack and pressed his hands tightly against the fresh wound in his side. Even as he screamed, a dark wind burst from the wound to explode through the streets. And where the wind blew, the Shadow Souled grew stronger.

  Only now did Jack realize that he and the Assassin had arrived in the middle of a great battle. The streets were filled with tens of thousands of dark servants battling a small number of human Awakened and a few thousand animals. For a moment it seemed as if the battle had stopped. Every eye was on Jack and the Assassin.

  Jack scrambled to his feet and began to run. The Assassin was wounded, but far from dead.

  “Kill them all!” the Assassin wailed as entire buildings and streets exploded into flames. Awakened and dark servants alike were buried beneath the rubble as dark fire and liquid evil spread through the streets.

  The battle was lost. No matter how valiantly they fought, it wasn’t going to be enough. Even before the Assassin arrived, it had been over. With his arrival, the Awakened were falling so quickly it took Alexia’s breath away. She closed her eyes and tried to make the Oriax and beasts fall asleep again. She tried to remember what she had done at least twice before, but nothing happened. Even if she had managed it, she knew in her heart it wouldn’t be enough.

  A short distance down the street, the Assassin walked among the Awakened. “Run, boy!” he screamed as entire streets exploded. “Your time has come!” Shadowfog flooded through the streets to smother the Awakened in its embrace. “This day will mark my final victory!”

  Alexia spotted Jack scrambling away, diving behind exploding walls or darting down alleys that erupted in flames. The Assassin was toying with him, laughing each time Jack narrowly escaped yet another attack. Where the Assassin walked, man, woman, and animal were flung aside like rag dolls. Even dark servants unlucky enough to be in his way were destroyed.

  Alexia whispered in Ollie’s ear, telling him it was time to go after the Assassin. She knew that she and Ollie would be running to their deaths, but she couldn’t just watch. Besides, the moment the Assassin killed Jack, he would be coming for her. She was sure of it. She was about to climb onto the elephant’s back when she heard a familiar voice.

  “I hoped we would meet on the battlefield.”

  Alexia turned to see Korah pulling his bone-white blade from the body of a mountain goat. “Go!” Alexia hissed. Ollie trumpeted loudly as he bolted away. “Hello, Uncle,” she said. “I have been looking for you as well.”

  Alexia drew her short sword and stepped toward him. Fierce battle raged all around, but man and girl ignored it as they faced each other. Korah grimaced as he raised his blade. “I don’t know what I hated more, pretending to be my weakling of a brother or pretending to be your father.”

  “If it makes you feel better, you weren’t good at either,” Alexia said. For just a moment, she glanced at something over Korah’s shoulder and smiled. Korah shifted his stance so he could look back—

  It was all the time Alexia needed. In Korah’s moment of distraction, she slung a stone into his hand. Korah screamed as he dropped the blade. Before he could pick up his sword, Alexia had the sling spinning again.

  “This is the sling my father gave me.” She spoke in a cold voice. “What did you call it? A child’s weapon? Since I am the Child of Prophecy, it’s fitting that I use a child’s weapon to defeat you.”

  Korah snarled as he shot a wall of black flames toward her. Yet Alexia had already flung her stone, and as she leaped away from the flames, it struck Korah in the forehead, knocking him flat on his back.

  Alexia stared down at her uncle. She realized she didn’t hate him, but pitied him. Just before she’d released the stone, she’d slowed the spinning of the sling. She didn’t want to kill her uncle. Korah was a murderer, and Alexia didn’t want to be anything like him.

  As she turned to look for the Assassin, her heart sank. The battle was over. The few remaining Awakened were being overwhelmed even as she watched. From every side, man, woman, and animal went down to the dark army. The battle was nearing an end, and the final few hundred Awakened would not last another minute.

  We did our best, she thought sadly as she watched a building collapse around Ollie. Yet Alexia could no longer think about the others. Fifty dark servants were rushing toward her. She gritted her teeth and turned to run. If she had any chance of living even a minute longer, it would be because she fought from the rooftops.

  She darted toward the nearest building as colored mist rose from the paving stones. A creature with three heads leaped at Alexia, but she dropped at the last moment and rolled beneath it, then leaped to a windowsill. She pulled herself up and kicked at a creature that was nothing but eyeballs, teeth, and matted fur.

  Alexia shimmied to the rooftop and turned to send a stone into a lizard-like beast with one head and two bodies. Colored mist now covered the entire street. It surrounded the remnants of the Awakened like a rainbow fog. Alexia stabbed her sword at a monster that had no head, then turned to send a stone into a beast that was a ball of nothing but clawed feet.

  She reached inside her cloak for another stone and found the pocket empty. No! Five monsters were crawling up the wall as more rocketed down from above. There was nowhere left to go.

  Alexia closed her eyes and stepped back. It would be far better to die from a fall than be torn to pieces by the Shadow Souled. This is the end, she thought as she fell backward through the air. A strange peace rose inside her as memories flooded her mind. She was three years old and climbing a large boulder outside her house. Her father ran over and hugged her fiercely. “You climb better than a mountain goat!” he said with a grin. She was four, and her mother taught her how to tie a sailor’s knot. “You are very good at that, my girl,” she said as she wrapped Alexia in a hug.

  There were tears of joy in Alexia’s eyes. These memories were what life was about—family and love and joy and laughter. These moments were what gave meaning to her life. She was five and sitting on her parents’ bed, opening her presents. Her parents laughed so hard that they began to cry. She was seven and jumping about with her friends in the Gang of Rogues, whooping and hollering. Alexia was thirteen and sitting with Megan Staples, drinking tea and eating strawberry pie. All of the painful and heartbreaking moments of her life faded as she remembered the people she loved and who loved her back.

  All these memories and more flooded through her in the blink of an eye. And as she fell, she braced herself. Yet she didn’t hit the ground. Alexia thought she might be hallucinating when she saw she had landed on top of a large red fox with wide wings. That’s when she saw the Sephari. There were at least fifty of them, hovering above the street. Spinning wildly above them was an unearthly tornado.

  Paving stones, gargoyles, roofs of buildings, and even dark servants rose from the ground to spin in the ever-growing cyclone. Many of the winged Shadow Souled had also been drawn into it.

  “Elion!” Alexia breathed. Elion’s eyes blazed like the sun, and as she began to sing, all of the Sephari joined in. It was the most terrifying and awesome thing Alexia had ever heard, as if fifty different songs had somehow joined together to form a masterpiece. It was a cadence, a war cry, and a mournful dirge—and it was absolutely breathtaking.

  Alexia remembered Elion’s song from the battle in the square of Buckingham Palace. She remembered thinking it had been the most beautiful thing in the world. Yet it was nothing compared to this. This song had power, as if the song itself were alive and taking part in the battle.

  Besides the fifty Sephari and their fearsome song, Alexia saw at least six more winged animals. In the air nearby was a lion, a meerkat, a rather large rabbit, and a panther. More beasts circled farther off, though she could barely see them through the thickening h
urricane spinning above the Sephari.

  What are they waiting for? Alexia wondered. The Awakened were growing fewer by the second. Even with the arrival of the Sephari, the dark servants had barely slowed their attack. Alexia saw Josiah and Juno standing back-to-back and striking out with sword and spear at Petrus, the Gang of Terror, and row upon row of dark servants that surrounded them; Adeline was lying unconscious on the ground between them.

  A mountain of bodies ringed Mrs. Dumphry, but thousands more were scrambling to get to her. Aias lay unmoving at her feet with a spear protruding from his chest. Jack had found his black sword and was wielding it with a master’s hand. He danced among thirty of the Shadow Souled, spinning and twisting the blade with a deadly fury, yet she had no doubt he would be overwhelmed in a few more seconds. The Assassin was there, though at the moment his attention was on the Sephari above. Liquid evil shot upward to explode against shields of light.

  Abruptly, the Sephari’s song ended as Elion threw down her arms. A hail of marble, diamonds, gemstone, gold, paving stones, barrels, dark servants, and rooftops rocketed toward the ground.

  The army of Shadow Souled shrieked in fear as death rained down to smash them away from the few Awakened still standing. Much of the debris crashed into the Assassin, quickly burying him beneath a mountain of rubble. For a moment the street was still. The few Awakened still standing looked toward the heavens in exhaustion.

  The attack from the Sephari had been deadly, though it had bought the Awakened only a few seconds at most. The rubble covering the Assassin was already shifting and falling away, and the Shadow Souled from the surrounding streets were spilling in.

  As the flying animals swooped down and gathered the remnants, Alexia wept. Barely a handful was still standing and not one member of her Gang of Rogues was among them.