Carter chuckled again. Shiera was stunned that he could be laughing at a time like this.
"I'm sorry," he explained. "It's just... your nose crinkles a little when you're confused. I haven't seen you do it in so long..."
Shiera did crinkle her nose when she was confused, and she knew it. But all that meant was that Carter was a very good stalker.
"Let me show you," Carter said, reaching for a thickly-bound book. He gently flipped to the first page, an old piece of parchment sewn into the binding. Egyptian hieroglyphics ran along its border, and an image of two figures sat in its center. The figures were a man and woman, clad in gold, with hawk heads. White wings hung from their backs. Their names were written in English along the bottom: "Khufu and Chay-Ara."
"Is that supposed to be us?" Shiera asked sarcastically.
Carter smirked. "Yeah."
"So, what," Shiera continued, "are we, like, ancient lovers, cursed to be reincarnated century after century?"
Carter flipped through the book, showing her the next group of pages, then the next, and the next. The same man and woman stood in the same position on each page, but very different every time. One page showed the couple wearing Roman armor—"Cassiel and Sibilla"—another showed them in Victorian-era clothing—"Charles and Sarah Hall." The last one showed them in the 1940s: "Christopher and Sally Hall."
Shiera wanted to find another retort; to mock Carter's story with the fact that she'd predicted it so easily... but she couldn't. Every page in the book felt real. More real than deja vu; almost as real as opening the door of her own home.
Carter's eyes clenched shut as he yelled in pain. As he doubled over, Shiera saw a knife protruding from the back of his shoulder. A man stood in the shadows of the hallway, his hand reaching for another knife.
Shiera felt Carter's pain tug at her heart, as though she cared deeply for him. She twisted and rolled him behind a table and out of the way, spinning back towards the man just in time to catch his knife. Without looking at it, she flipped it end over end, took it by the tip of its blade, and hurled it back at him. The man caught the knife square in his chest. He paused, looked down at the blade embedded in his sternum, then began laughing. He slowly pulled the bloody knife out, then tossed it aside.
"You'll have to do better," the man said with a demonic grin, "if you want to kill a man that's not entirely alive."
Carter stood up, dropping the knife he'd just pulled out of his shoulder. He picked up a huge mace from the table, roared, then charged at the man.
Carter and the shadowy man spun and struck at each other, tumbling their way down the hall into another gigantic room. Shiera felt lost; useless. She turned back toward the armory, trying to find something she could use to help. Finally, her eyes found the hawk-shaped armor.
Carter bashed the man's face with enough force to break a cinderblock, but the man was unphased. His skin tore and his face bruised, but he kept on fighting.
It's like he's a ghost possessing his own body, Carter thought, mentally deriding himself.
The possessed man laughed at Carter's frustrated expression. "Ah, you've figured out only now that you grabbed the wrong mace! No normal steel can break this shadow!"
Shiera's voice echoed from the door. "Then how about a little Nth metal?"
The man glanced up only quick enough to see Shiera's mace slamming into his face. His body tumbled backwards through the air, landing crumpled and lifeless in the center of the room. His spirit, however, hung suspended in mid-air, made of shadow and little else.
Shiera stood defiantly, piercing the shadow with her warrior's gaze. She wore the full hawk armor—Thanagarian battle armor, Shiera suddenly knew—lined with the ever-rare Nth metal. Shiera willed her wings to lift her off the ground. The Nth metal in her harness responded, and she gently floated upward.
"I don't get it," she said. "You're a ghost. All the things in the world for you to do, and you come here, the one place where there are people with Nth metal that can actually hurt you."
The shadow seemed to shrug, then it spoke. "What can I say? I'm a collector. I need that metal for my own. And I do enjoy killing you."
Shiera suddenly felt memory flash in her mind. This same man, this Shadow Thief, in someone else's body, standing over her. No, not her... the last her. Sally Hall. The Shadow Thief killed Sally Hall.
Shiera felt her insides burning with anger. She'd seen Carter murdered a dozen times over. She knew how that felt. If the Shadow Man had put Carter through that...
Shiera flew towards the shadow, headbutting it with her helmet. The shadow yelped in pain, flying backward into a wall. Shiera landed in front of the shadow, thrust her mace straight into its belly, then pushed a switch on the mace's handle. The metal surface of the mace became electrified, sending jolts of Nth-metal-powered electricity and light directly into the Shadow Thief's transparent body. The Shadow Thief shrieked in pain, shredding into a thousand pieces and melting into nothingness.
Shiera took off her helmet, then stared at it for a long moment. She turned toward Carter, then slowly walked towards him.
They looked into each other's eyes, Carter watching Shiera remember every moment of every life they'd lived together for four thousand years.
Shiera didn't know where to start. "Carter, I..."
"Shh. I know." Carter took her in his arms. "I know."
