CHAPTER ONE
The shadow took control of the man’s body in the middle of confession.
It had come into the church during the night, when it wasn’t quite so full of painful, damaging light. When it was possible to slide under the gaps of the door and flow down the aisle without a trace. The shadow understood that humanity thought holiness could ward off the dark. What fools they were.
It made joining with one a distasteful chore, but one that had to be undertaken, nonetheless. His kind could not touch this world of structure and order in their own forms, only by taking control of humans. It was necessary if the shadow was to complete its task.
The shadows of the confessional box made it easy to slip inside and wait. For a time, it lurked there, unseen, listening to a succession of humans recounting the things they thought of as sins, as if distinctions between good and evil ever meant anything. It stayed unmoving and unseen, with the kind of patience available only to the immortal, until it felt the one it had been waiting for arrive.
This one human potentially held the key to everything. Potentially held the way to make sure that the shadows could take this world from the humans who had filled it with far too much light.
The shadow could feel its prey below it. There were more than enough cracks in his defenses to slip through, enough weaknesses and uncertainties to slip into him. It could feel the cravings, the things he did not confess even to the priest.
The shadow surrounded him while he was confessing all the ways he had impure thoughts about a servant, all the needs for wine and petty jealousies that filled his waking hours. It flowed into his
thoughts between one sentence and the next, filling him, claiming him. Becoming.
In that moment, there was no distinction between the shadow and his new flesh. They were one heightened version of the same being. The shadow was him, and he… well, the consciousness of the man he’d taken was still there somewhere.
The shadow examined that consciousness carefully, rooting through its memories, its knowledge. It did not have what the shadow sought, but it had something almost as close.
“Is everything well, my son?” the priest on the other side of the booth asked.
The shadow didn’t answer but stood instead and stepped from the confessional booth. Would the priest be shocked if it used his host’s memories to confess to all he had truly done? To beating a man senseless in a drunken fight? To the opium cravings that sat around the heart of him? That would be sweet, but it wasn’t the reason the shadow had taken a host.
The shadow walked out into the middle of St. Peter’s Basilica, instead, enjoying the strength and youth of its new form. There were crowds of pilgrims from all corners of the world, and the shadow could feel the ones who held its brethren, ready to go out into the spaces the human things called their homes and undermine them. They had made so much progress in Rome, but it would just be the start of things in the world.
This shadow’s task was different.
It started to walk out of the cathedral, into the light, and in those first seconds, it winced. It was sure even now that the light would burn it, despite the protection that wearing a human body offered. The crunch of a step behind it announced the presence of the priest from the confessional, following it out.
“My son, you have not finished your confession,” he said. “Until you do, I cannot grant you absolution.”
Absolution, what a strange concept. As if forgiveness counted for anything. Only power mattered, and this priest did not have any.
He could not even sense the shadow there within its host. He still thought it was just another parishioner.
The shadow pushed him back, sending him sprawling one handed. The ability to touch was a joyous, wondrous thing. It almost made up for having to wander through a world of light and form and order. Better, this body was strong, and fit, and able. The shadow did not know how those of its kind trapped in the weak and infirm could stand it.
It strode from the church, enjoying the way this body was able to cover the ground, enjoying the looks of shock that the others there gave it as it went.
It took a route through the city that was both more direct and more circuitous than the one it had arrived at the basilica by. More direct, because now it didn’t have to flit from shadow to shadow, avoiding the Mediterranean sun. More circuitous because now it couldn’t just flow along rooftops and under doors. It actually had to worry about other people being in its way too, because its first experiments with shoving them aside created too much outcry.
Being seen was not its task.
It walked through the plazas of Rome, taking in the seven hills, the buildings that humans thought of as ancient, as if time could ever be sliced up so neatly. It walked past a place the host’s memories called the Forum, with great broken columns reaching to the sky, and saw the mighty circle of the Coliseum out over the expanse of the city.
The shadow ignored all of it, heading for a space where stairs led down into the city’s catacombs. There were a couple of Papal Guards at the top, but they were as shadow touched as it was, so they stepped back to let his new form pass.
“Enjoy your new body, brother,” one said.
“I intend to, once I have done what is required,” it replied. He replied. The shadow wasn’t an it anymore, was he? That would take some getting used to. All of it would, but if he succeeded everything would change anyway.
He walked down through the catacombs, where ancient tombs were stacked up, one atop another, as if the dead needed one
another’s company.
He took a hooded lamp to walk through the dark of it, shining the beam ahead so that he did not walk into any of the walls. That part felt stranger than all the rest of it, having to rely on light, rather than shying from it, and the risk of destruction.
Even in a body like this, the darkness felt like it should be more of a home than the light, but weak human eyes seemed to have problems with the darkness. He followed the turnings from memory, and it was strange that it had to be from memory, rather than a simple sense of connection to his kind.
He came out into the portal room, where he kept his hooded lamp down. The others of his kind were not protected by a body, as he was. The arch of the portal stood pulsing with purple dark-light, providing a swirling gap in the fabric of this reality that promised a way through to the greater darkness beyond. The shadow had come through that portal just a short time before.
Around him, the other shadows roosted.
There were fewer now than there had been. Many had gone into people, spreading out in the city, or the world. More would have been sent to lurk and watch. There were other places that needed them besides this. Rome was the start of their plans, but not the finish.
Yet even with those absences, there were still more than enough shadows that shifted and flickered on the edge of vision. Including the strongest that had come through, the power of it palpable.
What have you found? it asked him, the words appearing in his thoughts.
“This body does not know the precise location of the relic as we believed,” the priest said.
Then why have you not abandoned that shell?
“Because it does know of one who has the information,” he said. “A priest, too pure and strong willed to control. This body may be a good way to get close to him, though, and gain that information. He may be prepared to talk to this one.”
An acceptable idea. The humans value their friends. They tell them things they should not, even when it damages them. Yes. You may proceed. Find the one who has the location of the relic. Find it, so that we may stop the Shadowseers from gaining it.
“I will,” the shadow promised. He knew his role in this. The relic was everything, the only way the Shadowseers had to close the portals that linked their world to his. If he could find it, he would. Once he had it, he would cast it into the outer dark, and it would not be seen again.
If this body will not give you what we require, take another.
“I will.” The shadow would take as many bodies as it needed to accomplish this goal. Now that it had acquired the taste for it, it relished the prospect.
Once you have located it, you know what to do.
“I do,” the shadow promised. “I won’t fail.”
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