by Lola StVil
“What does it do?” Remy asks.
“It wakes people up from comas,” Quinn says.
“We’re going to wake Drew up,” Langston adds, excitement bubbling out of her in a laugh.
“You shouldn’t mess with shit like that.” Perry frowns. “Isn’t that how most zombie movies start?”
Langston pokes him in the ribs, and he gives an exaggerated moan, clutching his ribs like he’s been seriously kicked. Quinn ignores Perry.
She pushes herself between Regal and me, perching herself on his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck as she gazes into his face.
“I know I’ve been an awful girlfriend and we haven’t spent any time together, but I made such a mess of things with Langston. I really wanted to try and make it up to her, so I made this mixture for her. But now that it’s done, all we have to do now is wait for it to settle. In the meantime, I’m all yours. I solemnly vow to be a better girlfriend.”
She finishes her little speech and pulls him in tight as she embraces him. He hugs her back, slow to respond in my opinion, but she’s so happy she doesn’t even notice. He meets my eyes over her shoulder, a helpless apologetic look on his face.
Oh this just got a whole lot worse.
I could have condoned what I’d done, telling myself Quinn is the worst girlfriend ever. But it turns out she isn’t. She’s just a damn good friend.
Once breakfast is over, I make an excuse about having some reading to do and head to my room. I need to figure out how Regal and I can just forget the stupid kiss ever happened. For the moment, I am content with avoiding him, but I know that won’t work forever.
I figured it would work for more than an hour and a half, though. That’s exactly how long I’ve been in my room when Perry’s text comes through.
Emergency meeting. Everyone @ Bookstore.
That’s it. Straight to the point, no indication whatsoever about what the meeting is about. I feel a moment of anger. I’m the leader of the team, dammit. I should be calling the meetings. I shake my head at my own arrogance and head to the bookstore.
I reach the door at the same moment Regal does. Quinn is hanging off his arm, whispering into his ear and laughing. Great.
Regal spots me and stiffens a little. Quinn looks up, probably expecting danger.
“Oh, hey, Atlas,” she says.
She gives Regal a brief frown and I see him force himself to relax. This is no good at all. It would hardly take a genius to work out there’s something happening between us if he reacts like that every time he sees me.
“Any idea what the meeting is about?” Quinn asks me.
I shake my head.
“Oh well, only one way to find out,” Quinn says.
She lets go of Regal’s arm and pulls the door open and steps in. Regal goes to follow, and I put my hand on his arm, stopping him.
“You have to relax; we’ll talk later, but for now, just act normal.”
He nods, and I move my hand just in time as Quinn peers back at us.
“Are you two coming or what?”
I hurry towards her where she stands holding the door open. Regal is a step or two behind me.
“Why is everyone acting so weird today? First Perry and now you two,” Quinn says, rolling her eyes.
Oh, if only you knew.
Hopefully that won’t happen. She can never know.
Perry stands up when we enter, and I think we’re the last to arrive, but then I notice that Remy is missing.
“Guys, I’ve been following Remy,” Perry starts, getting right to the point.
Regal and I exchange a look, this time not an awkward one.
“She’s been going to a pain dealer,” Perry says.
“Remy wouldn’t do that,” Regal says.
“Are you sure that’s what you saw?” Saudia asks at the same time.
Perry nods. “I’m sure.”
He looks at Regal. “I’m sorry, bro, but I had to tell you all.”
“Wait, what’s a pain dealer?” I interrupt.
“It’s a shadow being that feeds off of misery. It takes pain and sadness away from its victims,” Saudia explains.
Everyone looks pretty worried, but I fail to see how that can be a bad thing. What’d I miss?
“I’m missing something here, guys. How is that not a good thing?” I ask.
I look around at their worried faces until Saudia speaks up again.
“It is a good thing at first. It takes all the bad emotions away. No pain. No fear. No sadness. But the pain will come back. That means the victim will go back to the pain dealer. Soon, the dealer has sucked away not only the bad feelings, but also your ability to feel anything at all. When that happens, it’s called being a Shell. It almost happened to my ex, Tracey,” Saudia says.
I cringe. That doesn’t sound good at all, and after how I felt when my father died, I can easily understand how Remy could get herself trapped in such a cycle.
“Can Tracey still be your ex technically after you’ve been kissing her?” Perry asks pointedly.
I momentarily put my thoughts of Remy on hold and glance at Saudia. She probably thinks I told him.
“How do you know about that?” she snaps, giving me an accusing look.
Perry snorts.
“Subtlety is hardly your strong point, Saudia. We can all see your spot from the window.”
He puts air quotes around your spot. Saudia glowers at him.
“So? Is she your ex or not?” Perry presses her.
“Would you just back off? I told you we are friends,” Saudia replies.
“Friends huh? I wish I had friends like that,” Perry says sarcastically.
His tone softens.
“You know the way this always plays out with you two. I just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”
“Perry, why can’t you just give her a chance?” Saudia asks.
“Can we get back on track here?” Regal interrupts, his frustration written all over his face.
“Yeah. Sorry,” Saudia mumbles.
Perry turns his focus back to Regal.
“Perry, you were mistaken about what you saw. I’ve been following Remy for weeks and she always manages to shake me. Whoever you saw, it wasn’t her,” Regal says.
So that’s it. The two big secrets are out—Regal following Remy and Saudia and Tracey kissing. I should be relieved. I hate secrets. They always have a way of coming out and biting you in the ass. I’m not relieved at all though, because the worst secret of them all is still a secret. And it’s my secret.
“Look, man, I know what I saw,” Perry says. “Maybe Remy gave you the slip because you didn’t want to see the truth. She had no idea I was tailing her, and I don’t think she knew you were either.”
Perry sounds annoyed now, and Regal looks ready to argue the matter. I jump in before either of them can go any further with this.
“What did you actually see, Perry?” I ask.
“I saw her go into an alley and disappear down the street into a Pain bar,” Perry says quietly, the flash of anger gone as quickly as it arrived.
“No,” Regal says, shaking his head.
He doesn’t sound entirely convinced. It’s said more like he’s trying to convince himself, not us.
“My sister would never do that,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.
“I would never do what?” Remy says as she walks towards us.
She must have found the house empty and came here looking for us.
I have to say I’m torn. On one hand, I can totally understand why she would be seeking out something to take her pain away, but on the other hand, she looks like her normal self. Not like someone who’s had the ability to feel anything sucked out of them.
Maybe she just tried it once and stopped herself from going back. If that’s the case, then where has she been going every night?
“Well, we were just… ” Perry stutters, trying to think of something to tell Remy we were talking about.
He
doesn’t have to finish his thought because Saudia saves him with a shriek.
“What the hell’s that?” she demands, pointing to the bookshelf beside Remy.
I follow her finger and see one of the books glowing on the shelf.
Remy turns to where Saudia is pointing and takes the book off the shelf.
“Myths and Artifacts,” she says, reading the title of the book.
“Hold it by the spine and shake it gently,” Quinn says. “Someone or something is sending us a message.”
Remy sighs and with a shrug, she does what Quinn says. The book’s pages flap gently back and forth, and then, as if unseen fingers held them, they split into two sides and remain there.
Remy frowns and shakes the book a bit harder, but the open pages stay separated.
She walks to the nearest table and lays the book open where it stuck. We all gather around it and look at the pages.
“The Hand of Glory,” Remy reads.
The picture below the title is of a severed hand. The hand is a brownish-yellow color and has a strange texture. I can see the fingernails, the knuckles, and every little detail. It looks like a mutated human hand. The fingers are all bent at unusual angles.
“Oh my Orah,” Quinn says.
I glance at her and I’m surprised to see she’s turned white.
“Squeamish?” I say.
I can’t resist teasing her.
“Do you have any idea what that thing is?” Quinn asks.
I shake my head.
“It’s an extremely potent source of dark magic. It was made by melting wax over a condemned murderer’s hand, turning it into a human candle. They used his hair as the wick and when they lit it, it immortalized his hand, but it also took some of his evil essence. The legend says only a thief can activate and deactivate it. It can freeze people in place and it can unlock doors. But the legend left out the most important part. It doesn’t just freeze people—it mummifies them, leaving the dead where they stand, with no evidence as to who or what killed them.”
I consider her words. It sounds like just the kind of thing we’d be looking for on our quest.
“Okay. It looks like we found the next object. I can see why Arken would want that. So how do we track it down?”
“That’s not the problem. Everyone in the Shadow world knows where the Hand of Glory is,” Langston says with dread in her voice.
“Let me guess. It’s somewhere ridiculously dangerous?” I say with a sigh.
“Let’s just say it’s not at Walmart,” Perry quips.
“It’s on an island known as the ‘Isle of Grey,’” Remy says.
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I reply.
I was expecting something more sinister. You know, the Isle of Death or something.
“That’s the proper name for it. Growing up, we just called it—”
“Perry, don’t,” Saudia scolds.
“What? She needs to know what we are walking into,” Perry counters.
“Saudia, just tell me. What did you call the Isle of Grey?” I ask.
Perry’s right. I need to know what I’m walking into, and suddenly I think this island isn’t going to be as innocent as its name makes it sound.
“Devil’s Kettle.”
In a perfect world, I’d jump online and book a first-class flight for the team and me to the Isle of Grey. We would sit in plush plane seats, eating bad airline food and telling jokes. But like everything else in the Shadow world, getting to the Isle of Grey isn’t going to be easy.
Nothing in the Shadow world is ever simple, and I find myself wondering how anyone gets anything done. I used to think being human was hard work and unnecessarily complicated, but seriously, we have nothing on this.
I realize I’ve tuned out of the conversation and I make myself concentrate.
“In fact, there is a shield that surrounds the place, causing it to be all but unseen to the human eye,” Quinn finishes up.
Great. Wonderful.
“But that doesn’t matter, because you guys know where it is, right?” I say, sounding more hopeful than I feel.
“Well yeah, but it’s not that simple,” Quinn says.
Nothing ever is.
“The shield doesn’t just act to make the island invisible to the human eye. It also makes it impenetrable. To everyone. Except Dax. He’s the warlock who cast the original shielding spell. Only he can allow us access to the island,” Quinn finishes.
“Okay. So, where’s Dax?” I ask.
“No one knows. He’s a recluse. He hates everyone and everything, so he isolated himself. No one has seen or heard from him in decades,” Remy says.
This just keeps on getting better.
After a lot of debate about where to start looking for Dax, I slip away from the team to call Pest. If anyone knows anything, I figure Pest will be my guy. He doesn’t disappoint. Well not entirely. He doesn’t actually know where Dax is, but he thinks he knows someone who might.
He gives me the details of where to find her, and we head to the cave where Pest said to look.
“It looks pretty dark in there,” Langston says nervously.
“No shit,” Perry says. “Looks like the kind of place you go vampire hunting during the day.”
“We’re not here to hunt anyone,” I say quickly.
“I’ve watched enough vampire shows to know that they have superhuman hearing, and if this one is awake, I don’t want to end up as her midday snack,” Perry shoots back.
I step into the darkness of the cave. Within seconds I’m disoriented and completely lost. Suddenly the cave brightens slightly. I can see our shadows dancing on the walls of the stone that form the cave. Saudia holds a fireball in her hand.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
“Don’t worry; I’m not going to throw it. It’s just so no one falls over and breaks a leg,” she reassures me.
I have to admit I feel better with the light.
We take off down the winding passage, which leads us deeper into the inside of the mountain. The cave is situated about halfway up Mount Everest.
Knowing that there are vampires around here suddenly makes sense of all those stories I’ve heard about experienced climbers who don’t make it back from their trips up here.
I try to ignore the piles of bones we spot as we weave deeper into the mountain. It’s not easy. I have to step over several piles of them just to keep going.
No one speaks as we reach the end of the tunnel and it widens out into a large clearing.
I have to admit I’m not expecting what I see. I was expecting a cavern, empty except for a coffin in which would lay a deathly pale woman with blood on her lips.
Instead, I step into a rather luxurious looking cavern. The floor is covered by a thick, expensive Persian rug. The walls are adorned with artwork, which in my estimation cost more than the average house. There’s a sumptuous looking white leather sofa and a huge four-poster bed. A mahogany dresser and wardrobe complete the look. A large TV hangs from the ceiling of the cave. Even vampires need their fix of their favorite TV shows I guess.
On the bed sits the most beautiful, least dead-looking woman I’ve ever seen. Her long auburn hair hangs in loose curls around her face and her sparkling green eyes are the color of the sea on a summer’s day.
The only thing that gives her away is the long pointy fangs that are clearly visible when she smiles in our direction.
She gets up off the bed and starts walking towards us.
“I don’t remember ordering takeout,” she muses.
The team tenses, and the ball of fire in Saudia’s hand grows. I step forward quickly, holding my palms up to show the vampire I’m unarmed.
“Tania, my name’s Atlas Morgan. Pest said you might be able to help us out,” I say.
Tania. Not exactly a vampire name, but it’s more original than Draculaess I suppose.
“He did, did he?” Tania purrs.
I nod. “He said you might know where Dax is,”
I say.
She laughs, a throaty sound that echoes around the cavern.
“I must sort that damn echo out,” Tania says, almost to herself.
She turns away from me. “Hang on a second. I might have something that can help you.”
She begins to rummage through a drawer in the dresser beside the bed. I glance back at the team, and they shrug at me. There’s nothing to do but wait.
“What the hell am I looking for?” Tania says as she rummages through the drawer.
“Um, something that might tell us where Dax is,” I say.
Tania spins around, her fangs looking larger than ever as her lips pull back and she hisses. I shrink back slightly.
“Who the hell are you people?” she demands.
“I… I’m Atlas,” I say. “Pest sent us, remember?”
Her face goes back to normal.
“Why didn’t you say so?” she says, all signs of her aggression gone. “Sneaking up on me like that is a good way to get yourself killed.”
“The information about Dax,” I press her.
She turns away again. I inwardly curse Pest. He told me Tania was forgetful, but he didn’t tell me exactly how forgetful.
“Ah, here we go,” Tania says, turning back to me with a small book clutched in her hand.
“Come,” she commands, patting the duvet beside her as she sits back on the bed.
“Don’t,” Regal says, but he’s too late.
I’m already crossing the room.
I sit down beside Tania, hoping that her memory doesn’t fail now. She flicks through the book and comes to a stop on a page covered in a messy scrawl. I don’t know how she can read it but she does.
“Here it is,” she says, pointing.
“The last time I heard anything of Dax was a couple of years ago. He got himself into trouble with an ogre, so he called on Fenton for help. He might know where to find him.”
“Who’s Fenton?” I ask.
Tania laughs.
“Hell if I know.” She shrugs.
“Thank you,” I say, hopping down from the bed.
It hasn’t helped me as much as I hoped it would, but I don’t want to be ungrateful. Tania seems sort of nice in a ditzy way, but I have no doubt she’d kill me as soon as look at me if the mood struck her.