Kara and a little boy stand together, alone in a small river. He clutches her hand. The cool water tickles their toes. A fine mist rises and twines around them, and Kara smells the faint stink of rotten flesh. Something touches her toes. She looks down.
White hands reach up out of the water and claw at her ankles. She jumps back, pulling the child with her. More hands reach out all around her. A thick black mist rises and blankets the stream. Long tendrils coil around their legs, like white snakes. Kara screams and kicks at the mist.
A stench of iron overpowers her. The mist parts. Kara struggles for her balance. She stands in a river of blood. The little boy has blood to his thighs. She is nauseated.
She hears a splash.
A figure, in the river … a man, no … the twisted human head and diseased torso that rise up from the river grow out of a confusion of human and insect guts on the back of a hideous monster. Long insect-like legs thrash towards her, black and razor sharp. Boils and sores cover the monster’s skin, like leprosy. Its red eyes glow in the black mist. It snaps its jaws.
The child lets go of Kara’s hand. He is dragged under the bloody river. Kara bends down and waves her hands around in the blood, searching for the boy.
A sob. Kara looks up.
The creature has the child. It grabs the wailing boy by the neck and squeezes. It opens its mouth. Blood trickles down its yellow pointy teeth. Slowly, it brings the screaming child towards its wet mouth …
Kara woke up with a start.
Her heart pounded hard against her chest.
She blinked through eyes crusty with dried tears and sweat. Still half asleep, she sat up on her bed with her arms stretched out before her, ready to save the little boy from the monster. She brushed her sticky bangs from her sweaty forehead and waited, calming herself, till the effects of the dream wore off. She’d been crying.
She wiped her face, and her eyes slowly adjusted to the early morning light in her room. Dark shadows became focused. Her demon and angel paintings that covered the walls like wallpaper looked even more sinister in the dim light. She shook off a chill.
The paintings were part of a story Kara needed to tell. Fresh from her nightmares, she had taken her paintbrush and painted the recurring stories again and again. She told herself that it was sort of therapeutic, and that perhaps, one day, the nightmares would stop.
After a while, her mother refused to go into her room. Kara remembered that her mother had thrown her hands in the air and screamed that the monsters were out to get them.
But to Kara they were only paintings. She figured they couldn’t hurt anyone.
5:00 am—still too early to get up for school. She forced her eyes shut and fell back onto her bed. The faint snore coming from the second bedroom down the hall confirmed that her mother wasn’t awakened by Kara’s screams. That comforted her. Her mother worked long hours, so she deserved a good night’s sleep.
Every night Kara dreamt of horrifying monsters, and of a scared little boy with tangled blond hair and blue and white pajamas… about to be eaten. She’d wake up screaming the moment the child disappeared into the monster’s mouth.
Kara let out a long breath. She couldn’t fall back asleep.
She swung her legs off her bed and tiptoed to her dresser. The pine floor boards creaked. White paint peeled from the dresser’s top and legs, giving a false antique look. A few knobs were missing from the top drawers, and Kara had used dried up pens as knobs. She picked up a metal picture frame.
The glass cover was cracked and chipped. Kara held it close. A man with disheveled brown hair and a friendly smile held up a little girl with long brown pigtails and yellow overalls. Kara’s chest tightened. She could barely remember that day anymore. Her father’s image had drifted away. He had died when she was only five, and Kara couldn’t remember him at all. She traced his face with her finger. What wouldn’t she give to have a real dad! Maybe her mother would be a little saner if a man was around. Kara felt an ache in her heart. And with a sigh, she placed the frame back on the dresser.
Kara’s face stared back at her through the cracked mirror. She forced a smile. Today was her seventeenth birthday. Seventeen was supposed to be the age when girls fell in love and went off to college to follow their dreams. Her smile fell. Kara’s summer job barely gave her enough to help pay for groceries. She could never save enough for college.
A cockroach skittered up her mirror and stopped right in the middle. It was eye level with Kara; its two beady black eyes stared up at her with eerie intelligence. Its antennae twitched nervously.
BAM!
Kara removed the book from the mirror and tossed the dead roach into her garbage can. She felt guilty about killing the insect. She pursed her lips and glanced at the mirror again. She should be happy, she knew. But she felt empty inside. A part of her was missing, like a car missing a wheel so that it couldn’t drive. For months now, she had been moping around school, not wanting to do anything besides painting and reading books. Even her best friend Mat avoided her. Two weeks ago at lunch time, he told her that hanging around with her was making his brain melt. She was making him depressed. Without Mat to support her, she felt even more lost and confused. She tried to shake off the feeling, but nothing worked. She felt alone.
The soft chirping of birds reached her ears. Kara smiled. Even though they annoyed her sometimes, they sang beautifully. The chirpings became louder, more intense. Then she heard the loud cawing of crows, lots of them …
Strange, Kara thought to herself.
She sneaked over to her window sill. The wood floors were cool under the balls of her feet. She pressed her head against the glass and looked out. Nearly twenty crows were perched in the tall maple trees. With their heads bent, they cawed at something below that Kara couldn’t see. She strained to look through the branches. A chill rolled up her spine.
Her heart was caught in her throat. There in the middle of the road was a little boy—the same little boy from her dreams.
Kara flattened her nose against the glass as she stared at the small figure in pajamas waddling down the street. He was barefoot. In August, the Montreal weather was still warm, even in the early hours of the morning. She watched him plant his feet and steady himself. The little boy shuffled past parked cars. Newspapers rolled around him, caught in the invisible wind.
I have to go get him, Kara said to the window. She made up her mind and pulled on a pair of grey sweat pants and a sweater. With a click, she opened her bedroom door and stepped into the shadows. Careful not to wake her mother, she stealthily crept across the dark hall and ran out her apartment’s front door.
She jumped down the stairs two at a time and bounced into the lobby. She caught her breath and pushed open the glass doors. The air outside smelled of wet leaves and grass, cool against her skin, hinting on the approaching autumn. Grey puddles littered the sidewalks, and Kara jumped to avoid them. She ran to the spot in the street where she’d last seen the little boy.
He was gone.
The street was very quiet. And Kara noticed that the birds had suddenly stopped chirping. The wind died. Kara shivered. A chill crawled up her back, and her heart hammered in her ears.
“Hey, little boy!” she said in a hushed voice, not wanting to wake up the neighborhood. “Little boy—where are you?”
She jogged past the spot and stopped. She dropped to her knees and searched beneath the parked cars. Nothing.
He couldn’t have gotten far. He’s just a little boy, she thought. Kara took a few steps forward and stopped. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She felt something wasn’t quite right, an inkling that told her to run—
And there he was.
Kara held her breath. She could see him clearly now—not the child, but a handsome stranger she had seen before. He leaned against a parked car, his arms crossed over his chest. The stranger’s gaze locked onto her. Kara’s heart stopped. He was tall and lean. A brown leather jacket embraced his powerful shou
lders, and he wore ragged jeans with a tight T-shirt that emphasized his muscular chest. He stared at her with a silly almost-there grin painted across his face. With barely there dimples, his face was unmistakably gorgeous. Too perfect. The kind of face which sent millions of butterflies jolting in the pit of her stomach. Kara had given him the nickname, hot stalker—her gorgeous shadow.
What the hell is he doing here at this hour?
She scowled. Something didn’t make sense to her. Part of her felt the excitement of having such a good looking guy gawk at her like that, but the other part gave her goose bumps—and not the good kind. There was something very creepy about the way he looked at her.
Hot stalker combed his messy blond hair with his fingers and turned around. He caught Kara’s eye, and looked away, pretending to be interested in some parked cars. He didn’t look anything like the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killer type to Kara—the kind that dismembered and ate their victims, like some kind of exotic stew. No, he had such a gorgeous mouth that she couldn’t bring herself to imagine him eating anyone. Kara couldn’t figure out why he was stalking her. With her lack-of-bosom and her invisible curves, she didn’t have much to offer the opposite sex in the way of looks. What was so engaging and ‘stalk-o-licious’ about her? Nothing. And that made her very suspicious of him. Things that are too good to be true—usually are, she realized, especially when they involved her.
She tore her eyes away from him for a moment, to look for the child again. Dark shadows lurked along the quiet street, and Kara felt herself tense. But nothing else moved. The boy was nowhere in sight. And when she looked back at her hot stalker, he had vanished as well, as though he were a figment of her imagination.
I’m seriously losing my mind. Kara thought as she brushed her bangs from her face. A light drizzle cooled her hot cheeks, and Kara welcomed it—
Something moved in the corner of her eye.
At first, she thought it was her hot stalker returning. But she quickly realized it wasn’t him. This man had white hair and pale grayish skin. He wore a dark tailored suit, and Kara believed it looked expensive and out of place at this hour of the morning. He leaned against a lamp post across the street. Even from a distance she could tell there was something very wrong with his eyes.
They were black. And they were watching her.
Kara’s stomach lurched; she caught her breath and a nasty feeling crawled along the back of her neck, making her hair stand up. Her heart pounded in her ears. She trembled. She recognized that face. It belonged to the foul monster from her nightmares. It sneered and licked its lips, showing off a mouthful of pointed yellow teeth.
Her insides twisted. A sick feeling rose to her throat. Kara bolted down the street.
With her flats scraping the pavement, she picked up speed. Kara became aware of the stillness around her even more. It was as though the world stood still, and only she moved within it. A sudden gust of wind pushed against her back. Darkness grew, sucking out the light. Kara heard thunder rumble in the distance. A large shadow suddenly appeared on the ground before her, as though a bucket of black paint was spilled by her feet. She looked up. A single dark grey cloud raced alongside her in the pink and blue sky. It travelled fast against the wind and headed towards her.
Kara gasped and focused on putting as much distance between herself and the black-eyed monster. She stole a look behind. Her heart caught in her throat.
The demon was right behind her.
A loud roar made her jump. Thunder cracked all around. Kara glanced up. The grey cloud was now above her. She choked a scream. Goose bumps prickled on her skin. How could a cloud move like that? She knew it wasn’t natural. Panic surged through her body.
Kara made a run towards a bus stop across the street and collapsed into the glass shelter. A shadow covered the ground and darkness crept around her. She looked up and stared through the top of the shelter. The grey cloud was directly on top of it. It had followed her.
Kara followed it with her eyes. A spark emanated from the cloud. And then another, until the cloud was consumed entirely by tiny electric flashes. She shook her head in disbelief.
Something moved in the corner of her eye. She caught sight of the demon—he stood in the doorway. He snarled, bared teeth shining in the darkness. She shut her eyes and willed the nightmare to end. There was a sudden loud crack. Kara opened her eyes.
A bolt of lightning charged out of the cloud.
It hit the demon.
Kara screamed as she watched him sizzle and crackle before her eyes. His limbs crumbled to pieces like overcooked toast. Ashes floated in the air like dried leaves from a tree in a breeze. A pile of dirt was all that remained of the demon. And Kara felt a moment of nausea wash over her.
ZAP!
A bolt of lightning struck the shelter. In a flash of white light, the entire shelter disappeared, leaving only a few traces of smoke and the smell of burnt plastic. Horrified, Kara glanced around her. How was this even possible? She shivered as her stomach tightened into a ball. Her hands were shaking, and she clenched them into fists.
She hopped out of the blackened shelter, back onto the street and ran towards the nearest house. A sizzling sound, too close … she felt a sensation of something behind her. Something touched her hair, brushed the back of her neck. She whirled around to look—and nearly fainted.
The demon with the black eyes ran behind her with unnatural speed, like an image being played in fast forward. He hissed and spit furiously. His pale grimace revealed rows of thin pointed teeth. He didn’t have a scratch on him, she realized. No signs of any burns from the lightening that had immolated him, not even on his tailored suit.
Why is this happening to me!
Kara’s knees gave in. She crashed to the ground and cried out. She rolled over and clasped her foot. The skin around her ankle swelled and instantly turned red and purple. She strained to stand, but fell back down. A shadow crept along the ground. She looked up. The grey cloud was inches from her head, so close she could reach out and touch it. A loud scraping sound came from behind. Kara whirled around.
The demon was only a few strides away. He would be on top of her in a matter of seconds. A weird smile spread across his face as he ran, like he was about to win the lottery.
“Help!” Kara screamed in desperation. “Someone help me!”
The demon’s mouth opened, and his chin dropped to the middle of his chest, like a snake unhooking its jaws ready to swallow his prey. In that horrible moment, Kara realized she was about to be eaten—just like the little boy in her dreams. She could only tremble and watch.
At the same time, the grey cloud settled above her. Blue and white sparks danced in and out of the cloud.
And then another bolt of lightning shot out.
Kara blinked as white light burned her eyes.
She felt a surge of electricity flow through her body. It burned. She didn’t have time to scream.
And then everything went dark.
Chapter 2
Missing in Action
Marked, Soul Guardians Book 1 Page 20