Gift of Shadows

by Amir Lane

  I realized, too late, that Angelo was no longer behind me. When I whirled around, searching for him, I found myself staring into dead eyes that seemed to want to suck the very soul from my body. I opened my mouth to scream. A cold hand wrapped around my throat and lifted me off the ground. Sharp claws dug into my neck. My pulse throbbed against his hand. I kicked wildly, instinct taking hold of me. The toe of my boot caught a rib, but neither it nor my nails digging into the soft flesh of the hand around my neck seemed to have any effect on him.

  “I’ve never had much use for witches, but you have a power I should like.”

  My vision blurred from oxygen deprivation. Stupid useless powers. What good were barriers to me now when I could barely breathe? I needed to get away from him.

  There was an idea at the back of my delirious mind. I wrapped both my hands around the shade’s wrist, no longer trying to pull him off me, and used my abs to pull myself up into a suspended crouch. The distance between his chest and my heels was so small, my knees brushed my stomach. I had never tried anything like this before, but I was going to have to try now. After all, the worst thing that could happen was that I could die. That was going to happen anyway.

  I sucked in as much air as I could and, rather than pushing the barrier up through my hands, I forced it into my feet as I shoved against him. The push of the barrier sent him flying back. I hit the ground hard enough to knock what little air was left out of my lungs. Staring up at the canopy of branches above me, I wondered if the stars above me were real or in my head. It was pretty.

  There wasn’t much time to wonder. Before I could catch my breath or wonder where Angelo or Bromley were, hands were at my throat again. I was more prepared this time. Purple writing spread over my body, cocooning me in a hard shell. Snarling, Bromley clawed at it. Red lines raised on my skin. I couldn’t keep this up for long. Physically, he was stronger than I was, and that was without being oxygen deprived. Even after only a few seconds, the barrier began to crack.

  “Angelo!” I screamed, crossing my arms over my face. “Where are you?”

  Bromley laughed. A cold chill ran through my spine.

  “He isn’t going to help you. He is a coward, always has been. You, my dear witch, have never been anything but a distraction.”

  A distraction.

  He was right. I was a distraction. This was Angelo's plan from the start. He was using me to distract Bromley while he set up whatever magic he was supposed to do.

  Or he’s using you to get away.

  The barrier wavered with my doubt. It was enough for Bromley to catch one of his claws in the skin of my face. His nail felt like steel as he tore his way down my temple. Who had those claws belonged to? I kicked at him, struggling to reform the barrier. When that didn’t work, I curled my hand into a fist and struck. My rings collided with what felt like a cheekbone hard enough to make him flinch back.

  For years, I had listened to every argument for and against wearing so many rings. The most common one against was that if I hit something, I would be more likely to break my fingers. It was true, if I wore hollow ones. All my rings were solid metal. I also knew how to throw a punch. There was still a chance that I would break my hand, especially since the sprain wasn’t fully healed. My fingers were swollen enough already that my rings didn’t move. I should have taken them off. The metal would restrict my blood flow and if I waited too long, could kill my fingers.

  I looked down at my hand. It was fine. It would have to be fine. The rings were to useful now. A strip of skin hung from Bromley’s cheek where I had struck him. I lashed out again, aiming for his throat this time. That was what Mama had always told me to do, aim for the eyes or the throat. At the first touch of silver to his skin, he thinned out and vanished. I stumbled, nearly falling over.

  Where is he?

  I whirled around, searching in the dark for him. My hand throbbed. Sweat rolled down the side of my face. It wasn’t until I wiped it away with the back of my swelling hand that I realized it was blood.

  “Rutherford Bromley! This is the Toronto Police. You are under arrest!”

  I held my breath, straining to hear any kind of movement that would tell me where he was. Or, while I was at it, where Angelo was. I struggled to remind myself of what little plan we’d had. I was supposed to trap him. Assuming I hadn’t lost my chance to do so, would it still work without Angelo? If I caught him, what was I supposed to do? Wait him out? I didn’t have the power for that.

  I pulled the rings off my fingers and slipped them into my front pockets. At least I’d been smart enough not to wear earrings.

  “Don’t tell me you’re too afraid to fight a woman,” I taunted into the woods.

  That one worked more often than even I believed.

  “I know what you’re trying to do, little witch. Do you think you can outsmart me? I have cheated Death herself.”

  His voice came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. No matter how I twisted and turned, I couldn’t find the source of it, and I couldn’t find Angelo. If I could keep him talking, maybe I could find him. I closed my eyes. The woods were oddly silent. There were none of the sounds I would expect from nature, only my own powers humming like a fluorescent light beneath my skin.

  “So stop wasting both of our time and kill me already.”

  “Perhaps I will.”

  I felt the rush of wind before I saw him. My hands came up to cover my face. Instinct took over, and the solid heat burned through my fingers. He solidified, pressing against the translucent wall, and pulled back into a shadowy mist once more. So close! He came at me again from the back and again, the barrier came almost too late.

  Blood stained the collar of my jacket. I shrugged it off and threw it onto the ground. The dark hairs on my arms rose against the cold despite how hot I felt inside.

  “You can do better than that!”

  This time, when he came at me, I was ready. The barrier was already half-formed when I caught the direction the cold was coming from. I spun on my heels and spread my hands. Like the other times, he slammed into the barrier. Unlike the other times, when he tried to pull back, the membrane had already encircled him. He threw himself against it hard enough to bruise my ribs. I grunted through clenched teeth.

  “Angelo!” I cried. “Angelo, I have him!”

  For how long I would have him, I couldn’t say. Bromley fought against me, shrieking in a way that made me tremble.

  Banshee vocal cords.

  Every scream dumped ice into my heart. My skin felt cold and clammy, feverish. Could a banshee’s scream kill or was it just a myth? I prayed to a God I no longer believed in that it was just a myth.

  “Angelo!”

  “I’m here!”

  And he was. I had never been so happy to see a man in my life. He didn’t waste any time, pouring something from a mason jar onto the dirt. These woods weren’t terribly dense, but there wasn’t much space between the trees. Bromley twisted in the barrier and lashed out toward Angelo. I lurched forward as if I had been hit between my shoulders. The scratches against the wall were hard enough to break my skin. Hot blood dampened my upper back, the spread of it slowed by my shirt. Something inside me ruptured. When I coughed, it was with blood spurting over my lips.

  That’s sexy.

  It was only a matter of time before Bromley realized the effect his attacks on my barriers had on me. I wanted to ask Angelo to hurry up, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

  The assault on the barrier stopped and for a moment, I thought — hoped — Bromely had given up. No such luck. Before I could wipe the sweat dripping into my eyes, Bromely thinned out again. He pressed against every surface at once. I pressed back. The script in my arms burned worse than the cuts on my shoulder, the glow bright enough that I could see the wild look in Angelo's eyes as he straightened, holding a book in his hands.

  “Hurry up,” I ground out.

  “I’m sorry I have to do all the work at the last second because you wante
d to save your friend,” he snapped.

  I flinched back at his words and immediately regretted it. A thin stream of smoke filtered through a crack at the top of the barrier. Bromely solidified once more and threw his weight against the spot.

  “Angelo!”

  Angelo began reading from the book in a language I didn’t understand. Latin, maybe, or Italian. Bromley launched himself at Angelo with enough force to pull me forward with him. I dug my heels into the ground.

  “Hurry up!”

  I wouldn’t be able to do this for long. My legs began to tremble and cramps tightened the muscles along my ribs. It was getting hard to breathe. I coughed again and spat blood onto the ground.

  “Do you want to hear how he screamed?” Bromley shouted.

  Angelo's voice faltered.

  “Don’t listen to him, Angelo, just keep reading.”

  Wisps of thick, black smoke rose from Bromley’s body. All at once, an almost solid ball left his body as though pulled by some unseen hands. The ball flew at me and for a brief moment before it erupted in black threads, I saw a face screaming against the barrier. Did that mean Angelo's reading was working? A second ball ripped from Bromley’s body. When he rammed himself into the barrier, it was with less force than before.

  “You think you can exorcise me?” he roared. “You will die, just like your precious Wesley Cohn! Oh, he begged for his life. He begged for you to save him, my little angel. But you didn’t, did you? You let him die!”

  The book fell from Angelo's hand. I mouthed a silent, No, but there was nothing I could do. Even as I pushed what little energy I had left into the barrier to keep Angelo out, I couldn’t stop them both. Bromley pushed out and Angelo ran in, and the barrier shattered like a broken mirror. I hit the ground on my injured shoulder, sliding enough to push dirt and rocks and twigs into the gashes. My eyes shut reflexively at the impact. I opened them in time to see Angelo lunge at Bromley’s throat with his hands.

  No.

  I reached out, my arm trembling. There was nothing I could do. Bromley’s unearthly laugh echoed through the woods even as Angelo tried to choke the life out of him.

  The book lay, still open, on the ground. If I could get to it, I might be able to stop this. There was still a chance we could win. The thought was the only thing that gave me the strength to roll over and drag myself over the tree roots. That book was our — my — only chance at survival. Even if Bromley killed Angelo, he would regenerate. I wouldn’t be so lucky.

  “Oh, my dear, stupid little angel. How predictable you are. How easy you are.”

  I froze, barely able to turn my head back toward them. As much as I didn’t want to see what was about to happen, I couldn’t look away and I couldn’t keep moving. My entire body was frozen in place as Bromley reached a hand up to touch Angelo's chest. Confusion flickered across both our faces, until Bromley pressed those claws into his skin. His hand became dark wisps as it went deeper until it was buried all the way inside.

  All the while, I couldn’t move. My body had become stone. There was nothing I could do but watch in cold anxiety as Bromley wrenched Angelo's still-beating heart from his chest.

  “I wonder,” he murmured. “Will you regenerate without this?”

  Angelo didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. His gasps reached my ear, only for a moment, until he fell silent.

  The woods went quiet. Angelo's heart went still in Bromley’s hand. I watched, waiting, my own heart hammering in my chest, for something to happen. For someone to do something.

  I have to do something.

  I was the only one left. Rowan was dead. Angelo was dead, at least for now. I didn’t know how long it would be before he regenerated. If he regenerated. If his body disappeared, would he be able to find me? Would he know who he was right away? Would he know who I was? I couldn’t accept death so easily. I had to keep fighting, if for no other reason than to simply make things difficult for Bromley.

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, little witch.”

  Bromley tossed Angelo's body aside, his heart along with it, like he was nothing but trash. I held my breath against the dust that rose as I scrambled toward the book. He was faster. His foot came down on my injured shoulder. I couldn’t stop myself from screaming. An instinctive part of me struggled to raise a barrier. The best I could do was watch the writing on my arm flicker.

  “You are more difficult than I gave you credit for. Many cultures believed… eating the hearts of their enemies gave them their strength. It has never worked for me, but perhaps with you, it will.”

  He lifted his foot from me and wrenched me to my feet by my hair. I dug my broken nails into his wrist. Skin gave way beneath the pressure but I felt no blood. Even when I had hit him with my rings, he hadn’t bled. I had once heard the phrase, If it bleeds, you can kill it. It had seemed funny, somehow, at the time. It wasn’t funny now. If Bromley didn’t bleed, could I kill him? Could anyone?

  I smelled as much as I felt his hot breath on the back of my neck. He smelled like a coroner’s lab, like cold death and decay. Would I ever be able to step foot in there without thinking of this moment?

  You’re not stepping foot back in there again. You’re going to die.

  Not without a fight, I reminded myself. My powers may have been failing, and I could barely see through the black spots filling my field of vision, but I was going to fight. For every person this monster had killed, I would fight. I screamed loud enough to hurt my throat and slammed my head back into his. Cartilage crunched from the force of it. He didn’t let go, and I did it again, then once more until his grip loosened. When I spun to hit him again, my face collided with a fist. I stumbled back, pain and blood blooming across my face.

  “Little bitch,” he snarled.

  And I had just gotten used to little witch.

  Again, his hand came around my throat and he lifted me off the ground. I didn’t have the strength to fight him off this time. I barely had the strength to kick my feet, even with the help of gravity. All I had the strength to do was spit in his mangled face. I hoped he couldn’t replace it. I hoped he spent the rest of his miserable existence with a shattered skull.

  You will die one day. You will die, and I will see you in Hell. Because if something as evil as you exists, there must be a Hell for you to go to.

  The thoughts came out as gasped breath. My head swam, an old Arabic prayer rising to the surface. Somebody was going to have to tell my parents. Somebody was going to have to sit them down and have the same conversation I had had with so many parents before. Had anyone had that conversation with Rachel Cherry’s parents yet? Had anyone even found them?

  A sound I had heard only once before filtered through my fading consciousness. It was the sound of something sharp being shoved through a body. The pressure on my throat released, and I hit the ground again.

  As I stared up at the night sky, I wondered if I was dead. If I was, death was different from what I pictured. But I heard a familiar voice and I realized that not only was I not dead, but neither was Rowan. Rather than claws, a long, thin branch was stuck through Bromley’s chest.

  “Get your hands off my partner, you crazy son of a bitch.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Rowan was alive.

  Rowan was alive.

  Rowan was alive.

  Barely, but it counted. He gasped and wheezed with every breath, and he supported himself on his arm, which extended into a thick branch that doubled into a crutch. The branch stuck through Bromley stretched, thickened, and split to cage him.

  “Get the book,” Rowan rasped. “Hurry.”

  He didn’t need to tell me twice. I pushed myself to my feet and dove for the book. It was heavy in my hands, much heavier than I expected it to be. Unless the weight was my muscles giving out on me. I didn’t bother pushing myself to my feet, instead staying on my stomach. I flipped through the pages for the one Angelo had marked.

  “Faiz, please,” Rowan moaned.

  I cou
ldn’t read it. The letters were clear, focused, and English, but I couldn’t read the words.

  “Regna terrae, cantata Deo, psallite…” Those sounded like the words Angelo had been saying. "Cernunnos, Regna terrae, cantata Dea psallite Aradia.”

  What? What was this? What did any of this mean?

  Bromley laughed. Rowan sobbed. I screamed.

  “Regna terrae, cantata Deo, pas— psallite Cernunnos, Regna terrae, cantana— cantata Dea psallite Ac— Aradia. Ca— Ce— Kay— Caeli Deus, Deus terra— terrae, Humiliter majestati gloria— gloriae tue— tuae supplicamus—”

  “I will tear the flesh from your bones!” Bromley roared. “I will feed your organs to your mother!”

  The snap of a branch breaking was immediately followed by a scream from Rowan.

  “Faiz! Faiz!”

  This wasn’t working. I couldn’t stutter my way through the page-long exorcism fast enough. Even if I could, I didn't feel anything like when Angelo did it. Another branch snapped. Rowan’s wails brought bile up into my throat.

  There had to be something other than reading this. There must have been something Angelo had said, something that explained how to do this, why it wasn't working for me.

  “I would never seduce a priest, I'm Catholic.”

  Of course. Of course it wasn't working. This was a Catholic exorcism. It would never work for me. Though I no longer considered myself Muslim, I found the words that had always brought me peace and strength, the words that were etched onto my skin and guiding my barriers.

  I let go of the book and stood on shaky legs.

  "Bismillah il-Rahman il-Rahim,” I wispered. I limped toward them and repeated the words, louder this time and continuing the Arabic prayer. “Bismillah il-Rahman il-Rahim.

  “With every breath that we breathe, may we act on behalf of the Divine Presence, the Source of all that we receive. With every step that we take, may we be instruments of the One Light which guides us, the Source and Nourisher of all of creation.”