Shadows of Ourselves (The Charmers Series Book 1)

by Apollo Blake

  Thinking of what Hunter had told me was making me wonder about my father more and more. Mom had never shown herself to have any sort of magikal affinities—and she’d always said that my gift was the one good thing my father ever made or gave her. You might be a freak, but at least you get paid for it, she said. No shame in being useful. Except for the part where, you know, he bounced the minute I started to develop my ability. My memories of him were of a tall, light-haired man, with tattoos on his hands and strong brows. He’d always smelled of car exhaust from his work as a mechanic. Melissa said he left because my abilities freaked him the hell out—and made it abundantly clear that she blamed me for his running off.

  So was he a Charmer? Was he even still alive? I hadn’t heard from him since my fifth birthday—I barely remembered his face. If this was his genetic legacy I was dealing with, a quick warning about the monsters on his way out the door would have been nice.

  Around four in the afternoon I pulled myself out of bed, got a shower, and dressed. I wasn’t up to going out, but I figured I would find Riley. A distraction would help.

  Besides, if I stared at the bedroom wall any longer I was gonna have to buy it a drink.

  Riley and me had texted a bit this morning, but then she’d gone radio silent after she told me she was going to talk to Penn. I’d been vague when she asked about last night, not sure how much I should tell her—which was stupid, since Riley looked for new information the way a horse looks for water, and it doesn’t matter what it’s about. I could tell I’d annoyed her. Part of it was that I didn’t know what to make of everything I’d learned, and the other part of it was that I wanted to protect her from it. Whatever this world was, it was dangerous, and I wasn’t going to be responsible for her getting herself killed. She was safest at home, behind her computer, Googling away.

  Riley had been trying to puzzle out my gift for years (she had theories about brain wave frequencies and neuron transmission and advanced mood perception or intuition) and I knew her curious mind wouldn’t allow her to let this shit go.

  But I also knew that Penn would do her best to protect Riley, too, and she knew better than I did. If she thought Riley should know the truth, she would, and if she didn’t, then. . . .

  I didn’t know what I would do. Didn’t know anything today.

  But I wanted to see my friend. And if I did spill all of this, at least she could help me process it. She was smarter than I was.

  I was in my bedroom grabbing my wallet and keys when I saw it. My bedroom is mostly white: white walls, white floor, white bed sheets. I didn’t have a lot of furniture—I kept things tidy, impersonal. Ready to pack up and go at a moment’s notice, since we moved a lot. Plus, Mom liked to snoop. And the white background space helped me focus on my art when I was working anyway, so I was less influenced by my surroundings.

  But now something else was standing out on the white wall, above the paintings I’d stacked against it—like a stain, except it was moving, growing larger and larger as I stood and watched.

  Slowly, something began to take shape, and I felt my breath catch in my throat as I observed it. A skull rose off of the wall, bone bleached white. Lotus flowers bloomed behind it, taffy pink petals unfurling as something moved inside of the skull. I stood frozen, sure I was going insane—this was a hallucination, had to be—as a snake slithered down through the skull and out one of its eye sockets. The serpent was black and blue, teal markings bold against the onyx of its scales.

  I was terrified of snakes. Petrified. The creature slid out of the bones and came closer, until its beady eyes were level with my own. The serpent pressed its forehead against mine—

  And then it was all gone.

  I blinked. It was like it had never been there. The walls were bare, pale white plaster, just like always.

  There wasn’t a single trace of what I’d seen.

  I looked around the room, but I was alone. My hands shook while I ran my fingers over the wall, although I knew I wouldn’t find anything there. That wasn’t real—not in my sense of the word. It was more magik.

  I turned and bolted. I ran out of my bedroom, tore through the apartment, and down the stairs. I had to stop all this.

  SIX

  BOND

  Hunter:

  Something was very wrong.

  I could still feel his power pulsing into me, filling me up, latching onto mine until they both lit up like fireworks. We’d been drunk off of it. Off each other.

  And now he was gone, absorbed into the air like a ghost.

  Something inside of me wanted to deny this was happening—some part of me that was done with all the problems piling over my head and stacking up like spare pennies. I had enough to worry about; I shouldn’t be worrying about this.

  A pretty boy with a rare talent and a sharp tongue. And a bond I couldn’t be sure had even had time to form fully.

  It was so rare.

  So unlikely.

  And it couldn’t be. It just fucking couldn’t, because this wasn’t something I needed to deal with. I couldn’t afford to waste the time.

  Except sometimes it felt like time was all I had. Too much of it.

  Still, the buzz of nerves wracking my frame. Still, the clenching of my fingers into fists and the sting in my gums. The worry, in the back of my head. Something out of place. Changed.

  I really hoped I was wrong. I had to find Sky.

  This couldn’t be happening. I don’t even know his fucking last name.

  SEVEN

  STALKED

  Things didn’t start to get really crazy until after I’d left the house.

  Even though it was nearly freezing and already dark, I felt like I was standing beneath a burning sun, my flesh roasting. Sweat beaded on my skin as I started in the direction of the harbour.

  My breath was visible in the cold air, but I couldn’t feel it. I felt detached. Apart. Separate.

  Someone had dipped a brush in black paint and drawn a fat, unrelenting line between me and the rest of the world.

  I had walked the harbour passage—a narrow red stone road that twisted and winded its way around the U-shaped crescent of our waterfront—thousands of times, during the day and in the darkness, but tonight it seemed particularly menacing. I shot furtive glances at the bushes and trees lining the path, which was dancing with shadows. I didn’t want to give into paranoia, didn’t want to admit that I was paranoid, but I felt as if I was being watched.

  I could still feel the lingering buzz of magik from the house—see the snake slipping out the gaping eye of the skull to press against my forehead again and again, memories playing on a loop.

  I zipped up my hoodie and kept walking.

  “Come on, Ri, pick up!” I fumbled with my phone, the screen glaringly bright in the darkness, and pressed the device to my ear.

  It rang. And rang. And rang. No answer.

  Riley always answered her phone. She was one of the only people I knew who didn’t hate talking on them, constantly calling me in the middle of the night. It could be my poor service. Or my shitty phone. I’d dropped it too many times to count, so the screen barely responded to touch anymore, and it took forever to turn on. But between rent, Mom bleeding me dry, groceries, and the meager paint supplies I could afford, a new one wasn’t in my budget. I shoved it back in my pocket, resisting the urge to scream or punch someone, and kept walking. I was already halfway to my best friend’s house, so I hoped to God she was there.

  Riley lived in the North End, in an ancient duplex with chipped green paint and thin, warped windows. I’d spent half of my life there, and it had always felt like home—the hiss of meat frying in a pan, the low buzz of the kitchen radio always on in the background, the sweet smell of the scented candles her mother packed the small apartment with filling the air as they burned. It felt more like home than our bleak apartment ever had. It was more than the coziness of her place, though. It was just her, her presence.

  I needed my best friend. I wasn’t sure how
much Penn had told her—if anything—about last night, or what I would tell her if her cousin had somehow managed to conceal the truth from her.

  I could figure that out when I got there. All I knew was I needed her. Riley was my rock. All my truly good memories were with her, curled up in ugly armchairs in the library with coffees while I sketched and she wrote or researched. Sleeping in her bed while she clacked away at the computer, talking code with our friend Kent via IM (it wasn’t really her thing, but she got by, and he loved having someone to talk to about it because it was his thing) or writing articles for her blog. Tending to the cuts on her knuckles after she punched in some asshole ex-boyfriend’s apartment window. Every step I took brought me closer to those normal, safe days, and further from the mystery that had been the last twenty-four hours.

  Okay, sure, I was like one minute off from getting my Hogwarts letter, yeah. But that didn’t mean I had to accept it.

  I can ignore whatever the fuck I want. It’s one of my best skills.

  Behind me the glow of Uptown faded, while across the water the lights shining from the West Side grew closer. The path leading to the North End twisted beneath the Harbour Bridge, and it was nearly pitch black underneath.

  I stopped in the middle of the trail for a second, staring into the shadows beneath the massive concrete columns that held up the bridge.

  Far above, I could hear the traffic rushing across, the sound and motion rocking through the structure. Behind me out in the water I could hear splashing here and there—harbour seals, and the waves lapping. But immediately around me there was nothing but silence and darkness. I’d just passed the last streetlight—the one under the bridge was burnt out, and after I passed under it the trail would end, and I would have to cross a street and head up a hill before my surroundings represented something less slasher movie again.

  I was not a coward. Between all of my friends, I was always the first to do new things. First to drink, first to smoke, first to fight, first to get kicked out of school, first to drop out of school, first to lose my virginity. First to have freaky powers like some phony cable psychic.

  First to go beneath the big, creepy bridge.

  Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

  To be clear, this wasn’t the kind of bridge trolls lived under. It was the kind that heroine addicts lived under. The kind where you got attacked by wild raccoon while trying to walk along the rusted old train tracks or found yourself getting mugged or raped by some knife-wielding lowlife.

  A hollow place, where ugly things happened. Normally, I would have plunged ahead without even stopping.

  From there it would be a six minute walk to Riley’s, and I could start to unload some the weirdness of the past twenty-four hours on her. But something was stopping me. Not the shadows, but what could be hiding inside of them. Before today I might not have stopped, but before today I hadn’t known about the existence of Charmers and Hounds and who knew what else? So, the hesitation. I thought I was a normal human with an innate ability, and instead I was part of some race of magik users who fucked around with shadow dogs and fireballs and lies.

  Now I was seeing things, feeling things, thinking things. All stuff that wouldn’t have crossed my mind before today. I stood there, silent, a lick of uncertainty in a dark world of terrors.

  There was a noise like something scraping along the ground, and I went stiff. The sound came again, eerily close in the dark. Far off in the distance I could the lights of the Holiday Inn and the office building attached to it. But between me and those was at least a five minute walk through the shadows that swallowed up every shape beneath the bridge.

  The sound repeated itself. What was that? A scrap of fabric brushing against something? Was a homeless person sleeping somewhere nearby, tossing and turning?

  Was I about to get rabies from some deranged rodent?

  It came again and I took a step back, then felt shame flood through me. Fucking coward.

  Why was I so afraid? None of this had affected me when I was ignorant of it, so why should I expect it to start now? It had never reached out to bite me before. Hunter said that he thought my powers were dormant inside of me—and that if he was right, no other Charmers would be able to sense me, or vice versa. I highly doubted that they’d come awake over night, that this strange sense of unease I felt growing inside of me was nothing more than my own worry.

  Visions or no, I was not a real Charmer—and now that I was away from Hunter, I had nothing to worry about. I took a step into the dark.

  A blur of black rushed out at me from beneath the bridge.

  I paused as my eyes registered the hulking shape flying at me, and then I moved—not fast enough—to the side. My foot caught on the path and I stumbled to the right, my feet leaving concrete for wet grass.

  A snarl tore through the air, low and gravelly, like a sound from the throat of a demon. Panic gripped me as I looked back, eyes bulging, hands shaking, to see what had come at me out of the dark. I think I knew what I was going to find before I looked, but the sight of the Charmer Hound behind me still sent a pulse of shock through my short frame.

  Things like this weren’t supposed to exist, and though I was quickly learning to shove doubt away, it still caught me off-guard to see the Hound.

  The monster really did look like a wolf, despite the clear differences. The elongated snout, the sharp teeth dripping spittle. The edges of its body were chopped and scratchy, constantly shifting, but its eyes, pure golden-yellow and deeply unsettling, stayed the same. It lumbered forward and its long nails scrapped against the red stone. That was the sound I’d heard.

  “Good doggy,” I told it. I started to back up at an achingly slow pace. There was no way I was fighting this thing. “That’s right, good dog. Stay, Fido. Stay where you are. . . .”

  Its growl deepened, and it took a step forward.

  Something moved behind it, a swath of shadows growing larger, and then something else—someone else—was there. They moved so fast it was like they were barely solid, a blur of motion darting for the Hound.

  The form stopped, and Hunter’s sculpted face came into view in the dim glow of the city lights behind me.

  He looked like an animal himself. His mouth tore into a feral mask of rage and intention as he stalked toward the monster. He threw up his arm just as the creature snapped back and lunged at him. Then he buried the dagger he was holding in its skull.

  My first thought was: Why didn’t you do that last time?

  My second was: Yesyesyesyesyes.

  You would think an animal would cry out, getting stabbed like that. The Hound didn’t. It was just a tiny whimper, big and small and terrible in the sudden absence of any danger. Then silence. Hunter let go of the hilt of the dagger, and the dead Hound slumped to the ground. The tension eased out of its muscles, and its curled snout unwrinkled as it pressed against the ground. I turned my eyes away.

  There was movement, and then footsteps. Hunter stopped a few feet away from me—I didn’t look, but I could hear him halt there. We just stood without speaking.

  I watched the lights in the distance, then the open water between the two sides of the harbour, a reflection of the city skyline painted waveringly on the surface. I let myself wonder for a second what it would be like to sail far away, and then looked back at Hunter and left the dream behind. I wasn’t sailing away anytime soon; I was stuck right where I was.

  “You saved me,” I told him. He just nodded silently, so I asked, “Why?”

  His brows knit together in confusion. “Would you rather I have let it eat you?”

  Eat me? I looked back at the dead animal and saw that it was starting to dissolve—little grains of shadow rolling away from it, back into the dark. Smoke rolled off of his dagger as the corpse. . .was it melting the iron? I faced Hunter, his unreadable face and dark eyes. Stepped closer. “I mean, why did you come? How did you know I needed help?”

  Hunter turned away. He looked like he was considering something, a
nd I scrutinized his face before his eyes closed off and I felt a wall snap into place between us. He walked back to where the dead Hound was fading away and kicked over what was left of it with a sickening sound.

  “Come on.” He said. “I’ll tell you somewhere else. It’s not safe here, and it’s a long story. These things tend to travel in packs.”

  Nope!

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go, and then you can explain why you’re following me.”

  He looked up sharply, but I simply raised my eyebrows. I was grateful—but not grateful enough to forget the fact that I’d never intended to see him again.

  I hadn’t left him any way to find me, contact me. Had he tracked my signature? Maybe my powers were waking up, after all. . . .