Shadowhunter (Nephilim Quest Book 1)

by Leena Maria

  Probably the most terrifying thing about the shadows was that they lacked awareness of their own true nature. Their consciousness extended so far and no further, as if they were creatures that had been deliberately stopped at a particular stage of development. Their belief in their own existence meant they would do anything, just like any other living thing, if they needed to fight for survival. They existed and ceased to exist in an illusion of individuality.

  The shadow would please the Masters. It would find the one it was sent to fetch. That way it would live. Life was the goal - its own life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  28. Grandma and the Book of Watchers

  "This library is in the upper levels of the buffer zone, and we work constantly to keep it located there too. If you see people just sitting here with their eyes closed, they aren't sleeping! They're doing energy work to keep the library afloat in the higher levels of the buffer zone. It in a way floats in the mist, and it is not likely the creatures of lower levels could find it, as long as we manage to keep it up. Its existence has seeped into legends, though, and some call it the Akashic library," Grandma explained to me when I tried to take in the vastness of the library, swirling around like a dervish almost. "These books come from every age of history. We have saved many irreplaceable books from destruction. When we know there was a major fire in history, for example, that could destroy valuable texts, our teams travel back to try to reach the books before their destruction and bring them here. They do not belong in the physical world anymore, but they are kept safe here in the buffer zone."

  We were walking through the library. Each apparently endless corridor was lined with bookshelves from the ceiling to the floor.

  "Don't you ever run out of space here?" I asked

  "No. We create more space whenever necessary."

  "How?"

  "That's something we teach to all our groups. How to master the material of the buffer zone with your thoughts. It is moldable energy after all. You just need to learn to use your mind as the tool to shape what you need."

  "Really?"

  "Yes. What you create, remains solid, as long as you keep on paying attention to it. That's it in a nutshell, but of course there is lot more to it, which you will learn with time, I am sure."

  That sounded so sci-fi I thought I'd better not probe any further. Not now. To me thoughts weren't material. They were just... thoughts. How could they have substance? How could they create anything solid?

  "Can you show me?" I asked Grandma.

  "Of course - that's the best way..." She stopped and bent down so her palms touched the floor. She remained there, concentrating with her eyes closed. I noticed a slight smile on the corners of her mouth and at the same time the solid floor under her hands changed - it looked like plastic putty almost. She scooped it into her hand and straightened up. Then she put her other hand over the putty-like material and smiled, at her inner joke it seemed. The little hole on the floor slowly disappeared and soon the floor looked like it had never been touched.

  I could see the material moving between the palms of Grandma's hands, changing color too. Then she opened her hands and there was an ornament - a little red cat sitting on her hand. It looked just like Nugget. I took it in my hand - it was perfect.

  "You concentrate on what you want to create, take enough material to make it, and then think about your chosen object. It may not turn out what you want it to be, though. Depends on your emotions at that moment," Grandma wiped her hands on her jeans.

  "Amazing... you even managed to create the exact look in Nugget's eyes!" I lifted the little ornament up to my eye level. Did I even see whiskers?

  "Oh well, it's nothing much..." Grandma belittled her creation but I could see she was pleased at my reaction, "Now, let me show you something interesting."

  She led me further into the library.

  "Here is a part of the library we are especially proud of," Grandma pointed as we proceeded deeper into the library. "See all these scrolls?"

  Indeed there were rows upon rows of scrolls on the shelves. Ancient looking in their shape, but not worn or crumbled with age as truly ancient manuscripts would be.

  "These are from the library of Alexandria in Egypt."

  I stopped in my tracks.

  "Really?"

  "Yes. The library demanded that every scroll that entered Alexandria was to be copied and put into the library collections. Every ship that came to the harbor had to comply. Scribes copied the texts and created one of the most fabulous libraries in the world, filled with knowledge from all the surrounding ancient kingdoms. The library burned down, and there is a saying circulating that you know you are a historian if the thought of the burning of the library in Alexandria still makes you cry."

  I could relate to that.

  "And you managed to save the scrolls?"

  "Not all the scrolls, but these ones, yes. It was very dangerous - that was the farthest we have ever gone in history, and that's when you discover that the phrase 'the mists of time' is not just a meaningless one. Reaching back so far is full of issues, but we sent one of our most experienced Time Walker teams to the scene and managed to get there. Local people were trying to save the scrolls, and they joined in the effort, dressed in the clothing of the time. They took as many scrolls as they possibly could, and brought them here."

  "But shouldn't these scrolls be given back to the world?" I bent closer to see the scrolls nearest to us, not daring to touch them.

  "That could change history. Besides, they look too new to convince anyone they are ancient, for the obvious reason they were brought to the buffer zone when still relatively new. No radiocarbon dating would show they are old.

  "We only take books when they are about to be destroyed, and bring them here. And we bring many of them here because in some book or scroll, somewhere, there has to be something written about the location of the Book of Watchers. We need to find it."

  "Lilith said that you were the one who found out about the Book of Watchers. That you hunted down a shadow and..."

  "Yes... You see, Dana, I have been a Huntress since I was a teenager. I was invited to join the Time Walkers just like you - given the same dream book as you. It appeared one night on my desk and I thought it was my mother's - she was very interested in dream interpretation. So I read it and passed the lucid dreaming test. My skills were obviously in the hunting of shadows, and that is what I have been doing ever since. I suppose I have somewhat of a reputation in the world of shadows, and that is why I was so surprised a shadow had crept into your garden... they fear the Time Walker Hunters so much, and me especially, that I would have expected them to wait until I was somewhere else before approaching you."

  "Approaching me? Why would they want to approach me?"

  "All in good time, Dana..." Grandma said. "You'll hear it when the time is right. We'll see."

  "Won't you just tell me what it is? Why all this cryptic we-shall-see-stuff?"

  "I know I am right in certain things, but I may be wrong in others... I prefer not to talk about something until I am sure. But whatever the case, you need to stay here in safety for a while. We have actually come up with a plan with Reggie about how to get you away from your little town without drawing too much attention to the matter."

  "Reggie?"

  "That would be our history professor. Reginald Rowan. The same one who keeps on pulling out his hair after reading all the wonderful books and scripts in the library and not being able to use them as source material in his research. Can you imagine what it is like to a history researcher to hold the actual ancient proof that something happened in history, and because it is in this library and nowhere else, not being able to ever use it in the scientific circles of our ordinary world? Reading the theories of others, seeing their errors and knowing the actual truth, but never being able to say so?"

  I had a feeling Grandma was trying to divert my thoughts away from why the shadows found me interesting. I let her. I would find o
ut.

  "Fill me in on the shadow and the Book of Watchers," I asked instead.

  Her face grew serious.

  "I was hunting shadows in the human world with my trustworthy red steed," she began. "My car," she specified with a twinkle when my face obviously showed I had no idea who or what the steed in question was.

  "Oh, OK. Right. You chase them in your car?"

  "Of course. The shadows are very, very fast, but they cannot outrun a decent sports car. After all they are semi-physical forms and subject to the laws of gravity like the rest of us. So they run using the surface under their feet, bouncing forward with their legs, just like us. This gives us an advantage here. Our form is more solid, and thus we have more power in our movements and deeds. Imagine someone jumping on the moon - they move like that, and can't quite use gravity to their advantage, even if they are still very fast."

  We kept on walking along the corridors of the library. There were no lamps here, but light seemed to seep in from somewhere anyway. Everywhere, really.

  "So, I had just bought my red sports car, and was on my patrol duty where we knew the shadows liked to appear, when I spotted this particular one. He was lurking in an alleyway, near a bar. That's one of their favourite locations – the energies of intoxicated people draw them like a magnet. When drunk people leave the bar, they follow them so they can steal the person's energies, and if possible, reveal themselves - a downright terrifying sight for the drunk. They come in different shapes and forms, but they are all like something out of a horror movie. You were able to see them, when you were a child, do you remember?" she asked suddenly.

  I stopped short. It was one thing thinking of drunks seeing demonic shadows and being convinced it was down to the drink, but this was now touching me personally. All the old night horrors sneered at me from the darker regions of my mind. I remembered the twisted forms, and the half-human, half-animal faces, the evil grins. Wherever there was a deep shadow, I'd been able to see them there as a child.

  "You mean... they were not nightmares like mother said?"

  "Oh they were nightmares, all right, only real ones. You refused to sleep in a dark room, because you had the ability to sense the shadows. And if they came close, you saw them too. Luckily for you, you were strongly protected, and they did not realize who you were. They were only drawn to you because of your ability to see them. Of course they thought they could scare you easily because of that, and that would make your energy easy to steal. They like stealing the energy of children, because it's so strong. They don't usually kill them, but they can come to drink their energy again and again, because children create new strong energy so quickly. Eventually, though, they cause the child to become ill, and maybe even die, if they feed on them too often."

  "Ok, that's it. What do you mean by that? Who you were... and who protected me? I want an explanation right now." I put my foot down.

  "No, I won't do that. Not yet. We shall see in a short while. I need to tell you about the shadow, the Book of Watchers, and our plans with Reggie for you first. All in good time."

  Grandma was so frustrating! I actually stomped my foot against the floor, like an angry child, but she just smiled.

  "So, I noticed this shadow, waiting in the alleyway near a bar. It wanted to scare someone, maybe even kill them, to feed on their energy. If you encounter a shadow doing this, you can actually watch the energy transferring from one to the other. It just leaks out. The scared person almost shoots out energy and the shadows roll that energy into a shape like a ball."

  Revulsion probably showed on my face, because she continued, "Yes, the best way to describe it, strange though it sounds, is that it looks like a dirty snowball. And then they just eat the energy, leaving the person depleted of it and ill. If they manage to scare someone to death, they get an enormous amount of energy - they can survive on it for weeks."

  Grandma's description was so vivid that the feeling of fear in my chest and stomach when I had seen the shadows as a child came flooding back.

  "So, I drove past, and the shadow did not recognize me – I was downwind, as it were, a favorable direction from my point of view, and it had not spotted my car yet, so it couldn't smell me. I parked my car on the other side of the block and got up on the roof using the fire escape ladder."

  As Grandma described how she'd caught the shadow, I could see her in my mind's eye walking down a darkened street with her determined, lithe gait, like something in a movie. And climbing up the fire escape onto a roof? Surely what she was telling me couldn't be true?

  "I still can't believe that you do this!" The words burst out of me before I had time to stop them. "All on your own?"

  "Believe it!" said Grandma and her voice had a steely ring that was new to me.

  "But - aren't you scared?"

  "I was in the early days. It's a skill like anything else. It's all about instinct - and one's instinct develops with time and experience. Anyway, on this occasion I had been following the shadow for some time before an opportunity presented itself..."

  My Grandma the Shadow Hunter. For a while I thought about her climbing onto a roof using a ladder. But then again, she was very fit for her age. And looked a lot younger than her advanced years. She would manage it easily.

  Grandma noticed me looking at her body. She smiled.

  "I know. I don't exactly look as though I was in my seventies, do I?"

  "No. You don't. What's the secret?"

  "The buffer zone. It sort of helps, the absence of time. If you spend a lot of time in the buffer zone, you age much slower in the real world too. And also, it can be in the genes. I suppose my body is somewhere in its forties "

  "I hope I have inherited your genes."

  "I wouldn't be too sure of that..."

  I wasn't sure I had heard right. Why would I not have inherited my grandmother's genes? At least some of them, the youthfulness being one of them, hopefully.

  "But, back to the shadow. I jumped down on it from the roof and..."

  "You what?" Now it was my Grandma the superhero?

  "Quite, you don't know everything...you'll learn all about it soon enough. Let's just say I know how to jump from heights without hurting myself, using the buffer zone – it has to do with using Lilith's Key. Which I did. I landed behind the shadow, and managed to lasso it before it could flee."

  "You lassoed it. All righty... and no one paid any attention to a grandmother throwing a lasso in an empty alleyway?"

  "Not in that part of the town... no, no one saw. First of all no-one does see the shadows, when they are in their hiding mode, and secondly I was away from the alley with the shadow before you could say "Get out of there!" I took the shadow to the rooftop to destroy it."

  "Sheesh! Are you sure you are my grandmother? I'm beginning to think someone's kidnapped the original and replaced her with an android. You sound like a killer out of a police series!" I eyed her in shock.

  "Well, I am. Sort of. What makes it possible is the shadows aren't really real."

  "This one sounds real enough!"

  "They have been created from the substance of the lowest buffer zone – from the very same kind of negative, fearful thoughts that they hunt for in people. They need to feed on negativity to keep their solid form. And the core, which keeps them functioning and conscious, is an extension of the Hunter."

  I didn't understand one bit.

  "I'll try to explain this for you... their Hunters – well, they are like our Hunters, only they belong to the Immortals. Their job is to hunt down the people we find valuable, the ones who can learn how to move in the buffer zone, and through time. When they find them, they kill them. They don't want us to get any new Time Walkers for our team. It is a war."

  I shivered.

  "In the buffer zone, while the Immortals were learning to work with the energies, and molding their world, they also learned to concentrate a part of their consciousness away from themselves. It stays connected to them through an energy cord. They feed some o
f their energy out, into a shadow formed out of the buffer zone material, and send them away. You could say the shadows have a consciousness of their own because their material is made of human consciousness, but it is not concentrated consciousness. It cannot function on its own. The Hunter's energy is the thing that makes it truly functional. It is the Hunter, who is inside the shadow form, using it as an extension of themselves."

  I tried to keep up with Grandma's explanations.

  "When the Hunter withdraws their consciousness away from a shadow, the solid form they have created simply disintegrates. The shadow just crumbles away. Nothing remains. So when I say we kill the shadows, we disconnect the energy cord that leads back to their Hunter or Immortal."

  I must have still looked confused, because Grandma, clearly trying hard to put this into words that I could understand, said: "The closest analogy that I can give you is that of the puppet. It has no life of its own, yet it moves, talks and can create the illusion of existence. A puppet master can even come to believe in the reality of his creation and the creation take on an apparent life of its own."

  This was really starting to make me shudder, since who hasn't been frightened by the idea of a demonic doll at some point? It's not just the stuff of nightmares; it's a key component of horror movies.

  "Would you like to see a shadow?" Grandma suddenly asked.

  "See? Here?" Panic made me almost squeal and Grandma patted my hand.

  "No, sweetheart, they cannot rise this high up in the buffer zone. I mean show you in another way. Here, follow me."

  She led the way along criss-crossing corridors to a little room squeezed in between the towering book cases. It almost felt like standing in a chimney, looking up. The room was just big enough to house one small television - and a rather old one at that. Attached to it was a VHS player, and the shelves next to it were full old VHS tapes.

  Grandma searched for a while, and then found what she was looking for. She put the TV on (it seemed to be attached to some sort of car battery for power) and pressed the buttons of the player.