by Bill Hiatt
In a day when we desperately needed miracles, Gavin agreed to lend us his car and said he’d meet us in ten minutes in front of Lucas’s house.
“Do we have ten minutes?” asked Dan.
“Probably that,” said Umbra, “but not much more than that.”
We gathered up what little we had and stood on the front porch, watching the beautiful sunset with fear in our hearts. At Umbra’s suggestion, we had turned on every light in the house, so it wasn’t likely we would be attacked from behind. Once the sun finished setting, though, every space beyond the porch light and the occasional streetlight was a potential entry point for shadow assassins.
“By the way, they do things like throw rocks to break lights so they can get closer,” said Shar. “When they throw, they never seem to miss.”
The sun had almost completely disappeared when Gavin pulled up in shiny black Land Rover—close to new by the look of it. Sick as it was, I wondered if we could use it to run over shadow assassins, and if we’d hear a crunch when we did.
“Sweet ride, dude,” said Shar, coming down from the front porch to shake his hand.
“Yeah, well it gets me where I’m going, even does a little off-roading when I need it. Something tells me you might need to go off-road.”
Shar quickly introduced us. When I shook Gavin’s hand, I said, “Sorry. I know this whole thing must seem weird to you.”
“Not as weird as you might think,” said Gavin. “I never told Lucas this, but I knew a while ago that something was off with him. This is connected to whatever his problem is, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is,” I said.
“Lucas has been secretive about some things, but the one thing he’s told me over and over again is how much you guys have done for him. It’s almost like…I don’t know, you saved his life or something. Who’s the girl?”
I looked around and realized Umbra was holding back and looking at Gavin almost fearfully. It took me a second to realize that Umbra had never seen a black person. Gavin was pretty dark, and in the increasingly faint light, he must have reminded her of the Populus Umbrae. To avoid a really embarrassing situation, I went back and whispered to her what was going on. Then she came forward and shook his hand.
“I’ve had some experience with this kind of vehicle,” said Dan, “so I’ll drive.”
Gavin laughed heartily. “No one drives this car but me.”
“But I thought—” I began.
“Look, I love Lucas like a brother, and he really has said great things about you, but Dad’s head would have exploded if I said I was lending my ride to three strangers and one almost stranger. I had to tell him I was taking a road trip to see Lucas. It was sudden, but it’s also Friday, so I could make it sound like a reasonable thing to do.” Much more quietly, he added, “Dad’s paying for the insurance.”
“Gavin, I wasn’t kidding when I said people were chasing us who wanted to kill us,” I said. “We can’t take you with us. You could get killed yourself.”
“I can handle myself,” said Gavin. In hand-to-hand combat, I had no doubt he could. He looked bigger and more muscular than Dan—almost in Shar’s class. But against shadow assassins, with nothing but fists? Not a chance.
The streetlight closest to the car abruptly shattered, making our surroundings much darker.
“They’re here!” shouted Dan. I looked out into the darkness and thought I saw movement, lots of it, but it was hard to tell.
“We have to take him now,” said Umbra, pointing to Gavin. “There is a chance the Populus Umbrae will kill him if we just leave him standing here.”
“What the f—” began Gavin. Shar had drawn Zom just in time to deflect a thrown dagger. Gavin couldn’t clearly see Zom, but he would have seen movement and heard the clash of metal against metal.
“Get in!” yelled Dan. To Gavin’s credit, he was in the driver’s seat in seconds. Dan was also in like a shot. I had to help Umbra, who wasn’t used to that kind of vehicle, get in. Shar took another swing with Zom, striking another dagger with an emerald flash, ripping it right out of the assassin’s hand. For good measure, Shar took another swing, probably slicing the shadow in half, though I really couldn’t be sure. Then he, too, jumped in.
“Floor it!” He yelled. Gavin already had the engine running and didn’t need to be told twice. We burned rubber as we pulled out, doubtless irritating the neighbors, if they hadn’t already been annoyed by the sword strikes.
I was pretty sure we ran over some shadows in the process, and there was no satisfying crunch, but we had learned from our earlier encounters they had to become at least a little physical to do their job. Crashing into them or forcing them to become immaterial to avoid a crash would slow them down at least.
We got out of Madisonville really fast and headed for Merced, the nearest point from which we could pick up one of the highways to San Francisco. I couldn’t see any sign of our pursuers, but Umbra assured us they were watching.
“Now that it is dark, they will have watchers spread out along any probable route,” she said, looking out the window with something approaching panic.
“How can they move that fast?” asked Dan.
“Distance is very different in the shadow realm from what it is here,” she replied. “They can cover what would be a great distance in your world as if it were much shorter. Right now I can’t see anyone pursuing us, so they all must be getting in front of us.”
“Shadow realm?” asked Gavin. He was playing it cool, but I could tell he was just as frightened as we were. I wasn’t sure telling him the truth would make him any less so.
“We aren’t in a position to tell you,” said Shar.
“We’ve accidentally pulled him into something that could get him killed. We owe him some explanation,” I said. “And yes, I know we could get ourselves in trouble. If not for him, though, we could all be dead right now. We owe him.”
I expected Shar to argue longer, but instead he just sighed and told me to go ahead.
“Are you familiar with the idea of parallel worlds?” I asked.
“Not much of a sci-fi buff, but yeah, I’ve heard of the idea.”
“That’s what we’re dealing with here. We’re being pursued by…beings from another world.”
“The shadow people?” asked Gavin. He caught me a little off guard, so I didn’t answer right away.
“What, a brother can’t know Latin?” he asked. “I know what Populus Umbrae translates to.”
“I didn’t mean—” I started.
Gavin chuckled. “Chill, Stan. I know you’re not a redneck or something.”
“Anyway, yeah, the Populus Umbrae are on our tails,” I continued. “They aren’t the only ones, but they’re the immediate problem.”
“Is Lucas from another world?” asked Gavin. “Don’t gasp like that, Stan. I’ve known the guy for a long time. All those sudden jumps, staring off into space, general weirdness. There was one time, too, when I saw him move faster than he should have been able to.”
“Lucas is probably going to want to tell you about his background himself. He was born in this world. Let’s leave it at that for now.”
Gavin drove on for a while in silence. Then he said, “Why did he leave town so fast? I didn’t know what to make of that.”
“The Populus Umbrae sent an assassin to kill him,” I said. No sense telling him right now that Umbra was that assassin.
“I’ll spare you all the details,” I continued. “Let’s just say Lucas’s…grandmother knew someone who knew us, and some of us came to Madisonville to help him. The Populus Umbrae was never going to let him live, so we made arrangements for him to relocate to Santa Brígida, where we could protect him better than if he’d stayed here.
“He didn’t want to leave you and his other friends,” I added. “He just didn’t have any choice.”
“I figured it was something like that,” said Gavin. “Are they chasing you because you helped Lucas?”
“They actual
ly want the, uh, young lady,” I said. “She was kidnapped as a baby and raised by them, but she escaped. They’ll kill her if they get her back.” Umbra looked at me but didn’t try to fill in the details I’d omitted.
Gavin asked a few more questions, which I answered carefully. By the end of the conversation, though, I had managed to keep our situation sounding more like science fiction than fantasy. If we had to tell Mr. Weaver the truth, Gavin was likely to get a bigger earful, but I’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
We drove on through Merced and then on to Route 99 headed north, all of us looking nervously out the windows. I felt as if I were living the opening scene in a horror movie, even though Umbra, the only one of us who could actually see the Populus Umbrae very easily, kept reassuring us they were watching but not massing for an attack.
“They must not have figured out yet how to stop your vehicle,” she said. “They have seen you drive right over them, so they are being cautious. Later they may send one of the larger shadows against you.”
I had heard that on Lucas’s trip down to Santa Brígida, the Populus Umbrae had tried a Chimera shadow. It was probably only a matter of time before something like that plopped down on the highway in front of us.
Then I had an even worse thought. “Umbra, what are the protocols regarding bystanders?”
“Unless they have been changed since I…escaped, the Populus Umbrae assassins are trained to strike as discreetly as possible. Normally, they will not kill someone who is not part of the mission, but if someone is in their way, particularly if someone tries to come to the aid of the mission subject, that person could be in danger as well. Definitely, they would kill someone like that rather than fail to complete the mission.”
“Guys, I’m not sure if San Francisco is going to work after all,” I said. Needless to say, that idea was not well received.
“Are you kidding, Schoenbaum?” asked Shar.
“If we can’t shake the Populus Umbrae, they’re going to follow us to San Francisco. That puts Tal’s parents in danger.”
“We can minimize that risk,” said Shar. “Umbra, how would the assassins react to the mission target being in a large crowd?”
“Normally, they would wait until the target is alone, or at least not surrounded by so many people.”
“That dovetails with what Tal told us,” said Dan. “When Lucas and the group escorting him stopped for dinner, the assassins didn’t try to attack the restaurant. They knocked out the parking-lot lights and lurked outside, waiting.”
“Here’s what we do,” said Shar. “It’s Friday night, and it won’t be hard to find a crowd. Call Mrs. Weaver again. Have her start researching places near the hotel, like restaurants that are pretty busy.”
“Why not the restaurant in the hotel?” asked Dan.
“Because they’re at the Ritz-Carlton, right, Stan?” I nodded. “That’s Parallel 37, and I’ve been there. We’re not getting in there Friday night without a reservation, and even if we could, it has nice, romantic lighting for dinner. You know, low light, lots of shadows. No, what we actually need is one of those diners with fluorescents bright enough that we could do brain surgery at the table. Know what I mean?”
We all agreed a diner, whatever its menu might be—and it wasn’t going to be as good as Parallel 37—offered the best chance of survival. I called Mrs. Weaver and asked her to find a good place and call me back.
“Mr. Weaver already suspects I’m going insane, so what have I really got to lose?” she asked. Then she laughed weakly, and I felt really bad.
“Tell him as much as you need to in order to get him to play along,” I said. I could feel the tension level in the car ratchet up several notches, but this time no one contradicted me. If we couldn’t get the Weavers’ help, we would very likely end up dead, so it wasn’t as if we had much of a choice.
The ride to San Francisco was easily the most nerve-racking of my life, but the shadow assassins continued to watch without making any overt moves.
“They are not adjusting as fast as I would have expected,” said Umbra at one point.
“What if we left San Francisco by air?” I asked. I had originally been thinking about having the Weavers rent us a car or something like that, but the Populus Umbrae would be able to track us that way, and we couldn’t stay on the move forever.
“What do you mean ‘by air’?” Umbra asked, so I had to spend a few minutes explaining airplanes to her.
“Well,” she said, still pondering her answer, “since they can make themselves weightless, they can fly, but they might have trouble keeping up, and if you flew during the day, they would not be able to watch through each shadow as they can on the ground. It is possible you might be able to escape them in such a way.”
“First good news I’ve heard all night,” said Gavin, who seemed to be taking the fact that his whole worldview had just been shattered pretty well.
A little later Mrs. Weaver called me back. She had found a place on Sutter, just a few blocks roughly south and west from their hotel.
“How’s Mr. Weaver doing?” I asked as calmly as I could.
“I told him you guys urgently needed our help, and you’d explain when you met up with us. You know he’d do anything to help you, but he thinks the whole situation doesn’t feel right.”
“I can’t blame him for that. Thanks, Mrs. Weaver. You’re a lifesaver—literally.”
“I try,” she said, her voice suddenly sounding shaky, almost tearful. “Stan, I’m so worried about Tal.”
Not knowing anything about Tal’s situation, I didn’t know how to respond. “I’m pretty sure Tal isn’t dealing with the same thing we are, and if Vanora was just out to kill all of us, we’d be dead. Since we’re still here, I assume he’s alive.”
Mrs. Weaver seemed a little better by the time we ended the call, but I could tell she was going through hell. She’d held up pretty well through so many past crises, but eventually anybody would wear down.
When we finally reached the diner, we drove around the block a couple of times to scope out the location. Mrs. Weaver had chosen well: busy street; busy cross street (so lots and lots of headlights); corner location, with street lights almost right over the front door of the diner; plenty of pedestrian traffic on the street, which might deter an immediate attack. The one problem, this being Friday night, was that there was no street parking anywhere near the diner.
Fortunately, there was a large, well-lit public lot less than a block away. We parked and at Umbra’s urging practically ran from the structure to the restaurant. “If we hesitate too long, they might assemble enough assassins to try to intercept us before we reach our destination,” she warned.
The pedestrians I thought so much of only a minute before became more of a problem when we had to maneuver through them. Then we had to wait for the signal at the intersection. Still, we managed to make it to the front entrance to the diner and got in without being attacked. Umbra must have been right about the assassins’ reluctance to engage in the presence of large numbers of people.
The light inside wasn’t laser bright, but it was certainly brighter than what we would have had in an upscale restaurant, and the atmosphere was probably more what we needed than an upscale restaurant’s. A fancy place at this point would have reminded Dan, Shar, and me of Awen and Vanora. In the fifties atmosphere of the diner, with its jukebox, red neon signs, red-and-white checkerboard tile, shiny chrome counters, and crimson upholstered booths, we could forget, at least for a few seconds, that shadow assassins surrounded us, waiting for us to be alone in the dark.
The place was crowded, but at my suggestion Mrs. Weaver had reserved two booths in the back. Dan and I sat in the booth with the Weavers, while Shar, Gavin, and Umbra took the one behind it, creating a buffer between us and the other customers. Now would not have been a good time to be overheard. The relatively noisy Friday night crowd would have been good cover, anyway, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances.
Mr. Weaver shook hands with me and Dan, then he looked us over critically.
“You guys look as if you’ve been through the wringer,” he said. Underlying his concern, though, I was picking up a very suspicious vibe. Mrs. Weaver had gotten him here, but clearly not in a mood to accept just a vague story about being in trouble.
Actually, our disheveled appearances would work in our favor. Gavin looked worn, almost haunted. Shar, Dan, and I looked better than we should have because the concealment spell on the dragon armor made us look like were wearing ordinary street clothes, unrumpled by our experiences. However, we had nerves stretched tight as piano wire, and it showed. Umbra did look rumpled, and the fact that she still squinted at what we would think of as normal light and that she had such pale skin gave her a kind of lost-soul quality.
The smell of food around me made me realize that I was ravenously hungry. I wasn’t usually extravagant when someone else was paying, but I ordered a New York steak and had to fight the desire to inhale it. Next to me Dan was trying hard not to wolf his deep-fried shrimp. Had it really been that long since we’d eaten? I could only imagine what Shar was doing.
“Stan, your hands are shaking,” said Mr. Weaver. Concern seemed to be winning over suspicion, at least for the moment. That was my cue to start our story.
I tried to give Mr. Weaver the same kind of edited version I had told Gavin, but Mr. Weaver, an experienced trial lawyer, used his cross-examination skills, picking away at every detail, forcing me to reveal more and more. He broke me before dessert arrived; I gave up and told him about every major event since August.
Toward the end I had been staring at my plate, staring at the brown juice where the steak had once been and at the one remaining fry. When I finally looked up, I could see his reaction in his eyes before he said a word.