Walking Through Shadows

by Sheri Lewis Wohl

  How did one fall in love with a stranger anyway? It went beyond the simple reality that they didn’t know each other. The complications were numerous, like the little fact they were from vastly different cultures. Not to mention they were separated by a massive gulf called centuries of time. Everything between the worlds they were born into was poles apart. To even think they could find a way to bridge that gulf was mind-boggling. Or, in other words, impossible, and that meant she just needed to keep her blooming emotions to herself. No sense complicating an already complicated situation.

  “What do you think we should do now?”

  Aquene didn’t even hesitate. “We must find him and stop him.”

  Damned if she wouldn’t give a hundred bucks to know exactly who this him was. At this point, she completely bought in to the notion a man was out there hunting for them and not with the noble intent of rescue. Quite the opposite. If he was anything like the bad guys in the typical Western movie, he’d ride in on a big black horse wearing a big black hat and waving a gun. Unlike those old Westerns, they weren’t damsels in distress who had to rely upon a man to protect them.

  She leaned down and picked up the grimoire from where she’d dropped it when she caught Aquene. “Let’s see what Hannah has to say.” Might as well go straight to the source and see what Grandma would tell her next. Instead of picking up where she left off, Molly flipped to the back of the book.

  September 28, 1836

  My time here nears its end. I feel his hand on my back and his breath upon my neck. He is walking through the shadows, and he walks to me. I prayed for more days to complete this book. I fear it is not to be, and I must hurry and finish as much I am able before he comes. The words I put down will help you, and you must use them, for they will grant you power. They will help you take hold of the light. Most of all, you must stop him, for I cannot. His might is too great. The strength that the king of darkness has given him is too much for my wanting skills.

  It is you, my dear granddaughter, who will send him back to the purgatory he crawled out of. My hopes, all of our hopes, are in your hands. Be brave and be strong. Do not fail.

  “Well, that was clear as mud,” Molly said as she closed the book. Cryptic as it was, it also frightened her because, just as Hannah had written about feeling his hand on her back and his breath on her neck, Molly felt the same thing. He was getting closer by the second.

  “I sense a change in the air,” Aquene told her as she looked up at the sky. “Do you feel it?”

  Oh, yes, indeed. From head to toe. It worried her as much as it seemed to concern Aquene. Not so much because she felt like she and Aquene would be harmed. No, she believed Aquene was as tough as they came and that, between the two of them, they could protect themselves. She worried about Angus and Winnie. Both of them were capable, no doubt about that, but this wasn’t their normal environment. Nothing about where they found themselves was even remotely routine for them.

  Then again, maybe she was selling Angus and Winnie short. Both were smart and accustomed to taking care of themselves in unique situations. Molly was figuring this out as she went, and they probably were too. She was sure they were. Give them a few more hours, and hopefully they would all reunite.

  Once they were all together again, she would be better able to concentrate on the prophesies in Hannah’s grimoire. She hoped the spells Hannah had left her would work too because, if not, she didn’t have a clue what they would do when they came face-to-face with the boogeyman on their tail. It wasn’t like she really had a strong hold on her powers or could recite very many of the spells her mother could produce from memory. As her mother liked to tell her, she knew just enough to be dangerous, though now that she thought about, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

  “Yes,” she finally said as she looked into Aquene’s eyes. “I feel something, and I don’t like it.”

  * * *

  “Not to be vulgar, my handsome man, but this is fucked up.” Winnie could already tell her shins were going to be black and blue, not to mention she’d scraped her hands clawing her way up the basalt rocks. Her modeling career was most certainly on hold. How she’d ever admired these damn hills, she didn’t know, because right now, she hated them. She would never look at them the same again.

  When Angus had the brilliant idea to climb up for a better view, and after his pep talk, it had seemed like a good idea. After all, it would give them a great panoramic view down toward the river. Surely that was the direction Molly and Aquene would take. In addition to anything else they did, they still needed to find Molly. It was most certainly Molly’s magic that had got them here, and it was also certain they wouldn’t get back home without it. Angus might have a twitch of something inside him, but it was a speck compared to what Molly could do.

  Winnie wanted to go home. She appreciated history as much as the next woman. Once or twice she’d even attended living-history presentations out at the Spokane House and Riverside State Park. They’d been interesting, and she’d loved the walks back in time. Taking the trip intellectually was one thing. Doing it in the flesh was something quite different, and this wasn’t nearly as interesting. When her only choice was to live in the past, it was kind of freaky. A little too up close and personal. She was a twenty-first-century woman, and living off the grid wasn’t her style.

  “Oh, sweetie, suck it up.”

  His endearment wasn’t taking any of the sting out of his words or her body. She was meant to cook, not climb, and Angus had to know that better than anybody. To be fair, he was always looking out for her, protecting her, and loving her. Pep talk aside, if he didn’t think she was capable of this, he wouldn’t have brought her along. He wasn’t the kind of man who put someone else in danger. That thought made her take a deep breath and stop worrying about how much her body screamed in protest as they moved higher and higher. She could do this. She had to do this.

  Winnie managed a laugh. “Sucking it up.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “That’s my lady.” He winked and her heart took a leap. Yes, she could climb this damn thing, even if it left her black and blue from head to foot.

  For the next twenty minutes, she actually did manage to suck it up and escape grave bodily injury. She was silently patting herself on the back. They were almost there, and in about two minutes, she’d be standing at the top searching for Molly with only minor bumps, bruises, and scrapes. Yeah, she was feeling pretty good, at least until she heard Angus gasp and yell, “You manky bitch.”

  At first, she thought he was talking about her, and then before she could get pissed off, realized he’d pulled himself up to the ridge. Staring up at the spot where he’d been just a few second ago, she screamed when all of a sudden a snake went sailing past her head. It was a miracle she didn’t let go of the rocks and fly backward to a very untimely death. Or a broken leg if she got lucky. Instead, she scrambled up the last five feet and was breathing heavily when she plopped down next to Angus. It took a whole lot of effort to pull her butt up and over that ledge, and she’d done it all by herself. She wouldn’t have refused a little help, had it been offered.

  As happy as she was to finally be on the ridge, she was dismayed to see him holding his hand down, his arm ramrod straight. His face was as white as a piece of copy paper. Now she knew why he hadn’t offered her a hand as she’d pulled herself up and over.

  “What happened?” she gasped.

  “Fuckin’ rattler.”

  Her heart dropped. “A rattlesnake?” She hated snakes—all snakes—but rattlers were poisonous, as in kill-people poisonous. With so much on her mind, she’d never imagined they might run into one, which was stupid. This was a prime habitat for the snakes. If she’d have remembered that before they started climbing, nothing he could have said would have gotten her up here. No way. No how. Now it was too late. “What do we do?”

  With his uninjured hand, Angus dug in one of his pockets and pulled out a pocketknife. “I need to bleed it out.”


  “Bleed it out?” Just the thought of what he was thinking of doing with that knife made her stomach turn. She wasn’t afraid of blood. Anyone who worked in a kitchen for a living had better have a strong stomach for the stuff. But just the thought of intentionally cutting into skin bothered her. Before she could say anything, he sliced the top of his hand where the two red puncture wounds marred his flesh. Blood began to spill onto the ground, deep and crimson.

  “A little back-country first aid,” he explained as he held his dripping hand close to the ground. “Not ideal but it will have to do.”

  “Should you hold it up?” It seemed to her that the bleeding would stop sooner if he held it up rather than down. In the kitchen, the first line of defense was to staunch the flow of blood.

  He shook his head, and it troubled her that he was still so pale. No, that wasn’t right. With each drop of blood he seemed to become paler. “Need to keep the venom from moving toward my heart.”

  She hated the sound of that. “Okay.” The word came out as a breathy whisper instead of sounding confident, like she hoped. He was consistently strong for her, and she wanted to do the same for him. So far, it was pretty much a fail on her part.

  He gave her a wan smile. “It will be all right. Very few people die from snake bites.”

  Very few people died from snake bites in the twenty-first century, but she didn’t say what she was thinking. No need to throw salt on the wound.

  “What do we do next?” She should be helping him somehow instead of sitting here asking dumb questions. He was the one hurt, and yet he was also the one doing everything. Not right. She had to step up.

  He had ripped a piece of cloth off his shirt and was wrapping his bleeding hand with it. When he was done protecting the wound, he took his jacket and used it to tie his arm tight to his waist.

  At her quizzical look, he explained. “I need to restrict movement, which limits blood flow. It’s a protective measure.” Once he finished, Angus slowly stood and, for a second, swayed on his feet. Winnie put her arm around his waist to steady him. In answer to her unasked question, he told her, “We’re going back to the cabin.”

  It seemed like the smartest thing to do, even if she dreaded climbing back down the rocks. At least for her, going down had to be easier than climbing up. What would it do to Angus as he tried to make his way down with one arm? Staying up here felt more like a death sentence. They were in a damned-if-they-did-and-damned-if-they-didn’t situation. They needed to work their way back down and return to the cabin to wait for Molly to not just join them but get them home ASAP.

  “Okay. We go back.” As she headed toward the same spot she’d come up and over, she gazed down and almost screamed. “There,” she managed to say in a calm voice. “Look.”

  Molly and Aquene, it had to be, and it was the most beautiful thing she could ever remember seeing. They were near the river, walking through the tall grasses. One woman was tall and dressed in pants and a jacket, the other in her knee-high moccasins with long black braids down her back. The sight brought tears of joy to her eyes and hope to her heart. At least until she scanned the other direction. A man, mounted on a horse, was galloping straight toward the two women. While he was still quite a distance away from them, he was moving faster than they were.

  Angus was leaning against her while following the direction of her gaze. “Even from this distance, I don’t like the look of that bloke.”

  It was impossible to make out any details, yet the sight of the man gave her icy chills. “I don’t either. We have to warn them.”

  “I have to stay calm.” He kept his voice as steady as his words. “Running to Molly would…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence for Winnie to understand.

  Fear shot through her, and tears of a different kind threatened. Once more she took his earlier advice and sucked it up. She tightened her arms on Angus. Molly and Aquene were on their own. “Let’s get back to the cabin.”

  “I think we should.”

  By the time they made it to the bottom of the basalt rocks, he was even paler than before. Winnie was very scared.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The vision had shaken Aquene in a way none other had. Not simply the strangeness of the landscape, the odd things she saw, or even the settlements that had wiped away so much of the natural beauty of her land affected her so deeply. Nor did not even seeing a single face like hers. What filled her with sadness as big as the sky was what Molly had told her when she screamed out her call: no one would understand.

  That the descendants of her friends and family could no longer speak their language made her want to drop to the earth and weep. She was proud of her people, their ways, and of the beauty of their native tongue. She wanted to believe that these things would carry on for all time, and if Molly spoke the truth, that would not come to pass. They would end much as her own life would one day pass into the great beyond.

  Looking into Molly’s beautiful eyes told her everything she needed to know. In that place where they had found themselves earlier, that piece of time, her way was gone, her people diminished, her way of life wiped away as if it had never been there at all. The tragedy of that knowledge was almost more than she could bear. She had started this journey with great anticipation, but now she was filled with great sorrow.

  Rather than let the sadness take her heart, she turned her mind to the man who shadowed them. She moved her thoughts away from that which she could not control and to that which she had a chance to change. They had to banish the darkness he carried with him and had carried with him for longer than she could know.

  “Any ideas on what we need to do?” Molly was looking around at the endless stretch of nature, appearing confused. “I feel the urge to move. I’m just not sure where to.”

  From the time she had left her family and friends, Aquene had gone forward with a true sense of purpose, her faith in what she was to do unshakable. Until now. For the first time, she was unsure where to go and what to do. She did not know either the man’s face or how to stop him. They had walked some distance from their temporary camp, though it seemed they had not made progress.

  How she wished she were home for Alumpum to hold her hand and help her find her way. She suddenly felt lost, and her courage began to waver. Perhaps it had been a mistake sending her on this journey. The quest that had seemed so clear to her in the beginning was now so confusing she wondered if her mind had gone feeble. The crushing weight on her spirit was like a chant that told her she was doomed to fail over and over again.

  Molly did not appear to notice her sudden change of heart. “We have to take this asshole down and keep him from hurting anyone else. If Hannah is right, we have to stop him from knocking me off in any event. Kind of sounds like my family’s future depends on it.”

  “Knocking you off what?” The words brought Aquene out of her introspection. It was not like Tilla was here for them to ride and be knocked to the ground from her back. Perhaps the man came on horseback and Molly wanted to throw him from the horse’s back to the ground.

  Molly laughed. “God, I’m so sorry. I keep forgetting. It’s another one of those things we say back in the twenty-first century. It means he plans to kill me.”

  She had heard of those who fell from their horse and did not ever rise again. Perhaps over time that was why Molly’s people used those words. “Ah, I do understand. You talk so strangely. It will take me a very long time to understand you.”

  “In my world, yeah, I talk pretty strange. Around my place, I talk like everybody else.”

  It was hard for Aquene to imagine a place where everyone spoke so strangely yet no one could speak in her tongue any longer. It was interesting and sad. Mostly sad. It also helped her shed her indecision. At this time she did not want to focus on what would be lost in the future. It was more important to finish what she had started. “I believe we need to return to the cabin.”

  Molly gave her a puzzled look. “Wouldn’t that be the first place this guy wou
ld come looking for us?”

  “Yes.” She hoped he would. While she had been content to take this journey as it came, that was no longer true. After what she had seen in her vision, she was ready to stop this creature before he could do any more harm to the world. It was only a tiny thing, but it was something, and that made her feel as though she had a little dominion.

  “So why go back? Don’t we want to track him and take him by surprise?”

  Surprise was a very good hunting tactic, and Aquene would employ it if she thought it would end their journey without either of them being harmed. She did not believe it would happen in that way. As she stood here breathing in the fresh air and letting the sun warm her skin, she understood that they had to confront this evil spirit face-to-face. They must do battle looking into his eyes. If they did not, they would never be able to stop him. His power, his influence on the world, would go on and on, and that was something that could not be allowed to happen.

  She did not know from where this knowledge sprang or why it appeared in this moment. She could only accept that it came to her for a reason, which was to end the years of domination by a demon that never should have walked the earth.

  And it would help her save the life of the woman who stared at her with beautiful, soulful eyes. Aquene hoped that when this was over and Molly returned to her own time, she would be able to remember those eyes for the rest of her days.

  * * *

  Matthew swore he could smell her. It was not the filthy, unwashed body of the witch who had appeared to him in the field and spewed her worthless dribble. On the air now an acrid scent floated to him, and it meant only one thing: he was closing the distance. That whom he sought was near. He patted the rope at the back of his saddle and smiled. The thing he had seen some distance back had shaken him, though he would never tell any of the way the sight of her had affected him. It had to be something dredged up from his memory only because he was weary. The night had been uncomfortable and sleep elusive. Sometimes lack of sleep could make a man believe things that were not there. He had seen it happen with others. Never before to him.