MADNESS: Book One of The Shadow-Keepers Series

by Jas T. Ward

  The Eater shrugged and rushed him again. Their steel met and sent out a chime of metal on metal as the sand kicked up under their feet, not helping their footing.

  Reno blocked and parried, but this Eater had skills which was something not always common in the cowardly demons. Sundown ranted in his head, like a white hot hum, but he wasn’t even close to letting his dark side take over due to the girl being here. She hadn’t been bitten so she would remember all of this. That was a problem, so the less he had to cover, if he could cover, the better.

  Chancing a glance towards the girl, Reno had to admit she had spunk but that distraction got him a well placed fist to the jaw.

  The force of it was so hard that it had him stumbling to the side, spitting out blood as he gained his balance. Thinking fast, he threw a leg out to the side and straight-kicked the demon in the chest to lift it off its feet and into the rocks that protruded through the sand of the bay’s shore. The demon’s form grew still as he turned his focus on the one with the girl.

  That demon had a knife to the girl’s throat and chided out, not even trying to cover his voice with a fake human accent. “You’re going take a hit to your points, Breaker. This human is dead and so are you.”

  Reno yelled as he got his feet in gear as the demon went to draw the blade across the girl’s throat.

  Sure he cared about losing saving points for like, the first time ever, but even more he cared that the girl had fought so hard and didn’t deserve to just be cut and dead.

  But apparently that fight was still strong in the girl because she slammed her head into the demon’s throat and then used the slacking of its hold to turn to slam her knee into its crotch.

  The demon paled and went to his knees to cup his had-to-hurt junk.

  Reno wasted no time in returning the slit-throat mentality and stepped back, as the demon’s blood sprayed from the slice, to let the body fall to the sand.

  “Wow, that was...”

  But as he turned to talk to the girl, he realized she was already high-tailing it down the beach and scrambling up the rocks to get away.

  “Hey! Wait a minute.”

  Catching up with her was easy and when he did he reached out to grab her arm. She whipped around and sliced him, catching his stomach with the blade and barely missing his happy parts with her knee as it came up into his thigh.

  Her eyes went wide when blood darkened his shirt before jerking her gaze up to meet his. “Oh god. I’m sorry!”

  Reno looked down like she had gotten him dirty rather than stabbed and then back up to grin. “It’s okay. Next time put more muscle into it.”

  She blinked at him and remembered she meant to get away but he hadn’t let go of her arm and gently hauled her back down off the rocks.

  “Stop. I can’t let you just run off, okay?”

  She shoved him and glared, brandishing her knife between them. “Why not?”

  The answer came in the form of two black sedans pulling up and Reno’s Breaker senses going off the chart. He had wondered why the Eaters weren’t killing the girl when he arrived, and he wondered even more what was up when reinforcements for their team rushed in.

  Something about this girl was different.

  But he’d have to find that out later as the Eaters poured out of those two cars. “Come on!” He grabbed her hand and ran up the walkway to the parking lot. His eyes landed on a sleek Ducati motorcycle and figured the person who rode it here must be taking a nice leisurely walk along the water.

  As he ran over to it and reached under it to find the ignition wires, Reno figured the owner would be taking an even longer walk when he found his ride gone.

  Tossing the girl the only helmet, he swung a leg over the bike as it roared to life. He looked back as she did and knew they didn’t have the time to waste. Holding a hand out to her, he spoke in a calm voice with a smile. “We’re out of time. Come on or there’s not a lot I can do. Too many of them. Just one of me and you don’t have that many knees.”

  She climbed up behind him and shoved the skull cap helmet on as she wrapped her arms around his waist, with that messenger bag held tight against his stomach in her grip.

  He revved the bike, spun the rear tire, clutching the throttle and brakes to swing it around, and almost went into a wheelie as he kicked up the gears.

  The Eaters threw themselves out of the way and ran to their cars as he hauled ass out of the park and hit the smooth Pacific Coast highway that circled around the bay and up in to the hills.

  He flattened out behind the barely there windscreen with his chest pressed on the gas tank as the girl wrapped tighter, pressing her cheek into his back.

  He cut his eyes over to the small oval rear view side mirror and saw the two sedans gaining ground so he twisted the throttle, kicked up a gear and hit triple digits on the speedometer.

  The road was twisty and luckily for him there was not a lot of traffic. He wove and bobbed between cars, having to touch knee a few times around some of the hairpins turns. Each time he did the girl would squeak or gasp, but didn’t totally freak out. That was good, because just one wrong lean at this speed and they would go down. And at 110 miles per hour that could be bad.

  Really, really bad.

  “Do you have a plan?”

  Reno barely heard her yell over the wind whipping around them and shook his head. He looked over his shoulder at her and grinned.

  “I never do,” he yelled back before he faced forward again taking a turn too sharp and causing the rear of the bike to shimmy as it hit a patch of loose gravel.

  His eyes darted from side mirror to side mirror and knew this tactic wasn’t going to work.

  Reno was able to get ahead of the sedans on the straights, but as the road wound upward so did the curves, slowing him down. Then the two cars were right behind them with their headlights glaring white in the dark.

  Letting out a curse, he wrapped a hand around both of the girl’s hands and squeezed on them to let her know to hold tighter. She did and he toed down the bike’s gear suddenly and hit the brakes.

  Smoke clouded from the tires as the rear end hopped up at the sudden loss of speed. One car slammed on its brakes, which caused it to lose control and go over the side of the road to crash into the rocks of the cliff drop below. The other sedan was able to slow and although it spun, the driver retained control and it stayed on the road.

  Reaching behind him to bring out both his 9mm’s, he opened fire on the surviving sedan before the bike's rear tire even bounced once on the pavement.

  After splattering the car with bullets as he emptied both clips at it, causing glass and metal to look like glitter on the asphalt, he dropped his smoking guns to his thighs to wait and see if this chase was really over. That was the thing with undead beings. Tricky to make dead-dead.

  He didn’t have long to wait as the sedan burned its own rubber and headed straight for them. He looked back at the girl and said with a growl, “Run.”

  The girl jumped off the bike and ran across the road to press herself against the rock cliff side of the highway.

  After ejecting his empty clips and slamming two fresh ones to reload his guns, Reno revved the bike once again, but kept the brake on causing the rear tire to heat and white smoke to billow. The bike engine screamed in protest.

  As soon as the car lined up and gunned it, Reno released the brake and barreled straight for it, full throttle, with the bike sounding like one very pissed off wasp.

  “Sundown!”

  Instantly his vision flipped to red as his powers surged with dead perfect accuracy and quickened reflexes.

  Everything seemed to blur into a slow-mo view as he brought his legs up under him to crouch on the speeding bike seat, keeping his hands on the handlebar grips.

  A split second before he hit the sedan, he was airborne in a graceful flip over the car, with his guns blazing in his hands, the shell casings hitting the metal like ammunition rain.

  The motorcycle exploded at the same s
econd that his bullets punctured through the windshield, and then the roof, as he was carried over the car to land in a crouch on the pavement behind its path.

  The vehicle went out of control to hit the guardrail on the ravine side of the highway and went off the edge to join the smoking first sedan below.

  Standing, he walked over and turned his head away just seconds from the billowing wave of heat that surged upward when the car exploded to light up the wooded valley below, bright in the night.

  “Were those Eaters?”

  Reno looked over to see the girl standing there. She was also peering over the busted guardrail to look at the twisted burning metal below. He narrowed his eyes and twisted his lips at her question and grimaced.

  Oh gosh Reno thought... This? Was not going to make Bounce happy and that was kinda becoming a trend.

  “I need to find a new head. Do you think they have those on Craig’s list? Ebay? Overstock? Get it? Overstock. As in too many? God I kill me. Better than you doing it ,you Dumbass.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Always Something

  “What in the name of Zelda were you thinking?”

  Reno at that moment was thinking who the heck Zelda was as Bounce paced in front of him in a room at the central Grid station. The god was angry and baffled once again, of course, because of him.

  He watched Bounce go back and forth like a pissed off tiger as Reno threw up his hands in frustration.

  “I didn’t know where else to take her! She obviously knew what the demons were. She called them Eaters. I didn’t tell her that. How did she know that? And she saw me take them out. They didn’t bite her. Doesn’t that seem weird to you? I mean, they always bite. Have you ever heard of them not just biting right away? But they didn’t...” he snapped his mouth shut when he saw Bounce’s thunderous look at his babbling. He had told the story of it all three times now and yet the god still looked at him accusingly.

  He seemed to be at fault for it all somehow.

  “How is this different than all other times? Face it, we need to change our name to scapegoat. Hey? Can I have the girl? You got one.”

  Okay, maybe he was at fault for some of it, but he didn’t reveal the Grid to the girl for she already knew something about it before thumbing a ride back to the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Bounce continued that pacing. Back and forth as he asked again more questions Reno wished the god wouldn’t ask. “Why didn’t you just call for a pick-up? Why bring her here, Reno, to the primary station of the Grid?”

  The primary station of the Grid was contained in the rock cliff bases at each end of the Golden Gate Bridge and ran through a series of conduits and tunnels under the deep water of the bay.

  The entrance in fact was hidden deep in the old military base located on the south end of the Bridge named Fort Point. It was built in 1861, and the thing the human historians didn’t know is that it was created to be the heart of the Grid.

  The bridge itself acted like a huge receiver and transmitter for all the energy that ran through the Grid itself. Tourists had no idea how close they actually were to a centuries old war that kept the most evil of Hell at bay, literally. The history and tour facts said it had never seen wartime when in fact, it was not built for the civil war, but for the war of the Grid, so it had seen more of its share of war. Just not one that the humans knew about.

  Even Alcatraz Prison was a cover for the Grid as it sat on its lonely island. Below the floors were a series of containment cells for Eaters and informants out to destroy the Grid. Whereas the jail above had lost a few prisoners, the one below never had.

  When Reno had arrived here a few hours ago, they had seemed surprised about the whole attack and car chase; even though he knew he had gone online right before it had started. It was the rule.

  However, bringing the girl here, still clutching her message bag, was completely and totally against the rules.

  Reno knew that. But she seemed to know things he didn’t tell her. Like asking all kinds of questions he refused to answer as they made their way here; like if they were heading back to the Bridge, and knowing they called the baddies Eaters.

  Not to mention she asked if his stamp hurt when he got it (That one he couldn’t answer, because he hadn’t been completely made when the stamp was placed on his arm). She actually called it a stamp and not a tattoo, as an outsider would have. And then there was still the matter of why the Eaters were so hot and heavy to grab her, yet not feed on her.

  Reno had been trying to tell Bounce all of this, but couldn’t seem to get a word in between the god’s rants and complaints.

  Reno frowned at Bounce’s reasoning about calling for backup and lifted his arm to stare at his stamp. For some reason it must be on the fritz, though he was told that couldn’t happen. The nano-bots that were a part of the stamp replicated when needed so they should not just, well, stop working.

  He held out his arm to Bounce. “I broke it. Somehow.”

  Bounce stopped his verbal hissy-fit flow when he heard that and grabbed Reno’s arm by the wrist to stare down at the Breaker’s stamp.

  “What do you mean you broke it?” Of all things, if anyone could break a marvel of technology, it would be Reno.

  Looking down at the Breaker’s arm, he brushed his thumb over the Grid stamp and it lit up as it should. “It’s working now, Reno. You just forgot to put it online.” He dropped the man’s arm and rumbled out a long breath of frustration. “What are we supposed to do with your little guest, Reno?”

  Reno’s eyes drifted left, then right, as his brows came down with his hand going up to run his fingers through his hair. He had no idea.

  Heck, Hello again, he wasn’t the smart one. Never had been.

  He opened his mouth to suggest something, but he figured it would just be stupid, so he closed it again. “Uh. I don’t know. Sorry?”

  Bounce glared at him and Reno watched those weird eyes flare with an orange color. Please don’t turn red he thought as he took a step back from the god. “Look. I’ve been trying to tell you, she knows about the Grid already. And the Eaters were after her and it was not for food.”

  “My dad was a Relay.”

  Both of them turned to see the girl standing in the doorway, again clutching that messenger bag.

  Now that Reno got a chance to look at her closer and not when going 100 + miles an hour, she didn’t look totally homeless.

  Yeah, the girl’s face was dirty with dark shadows under her eyes and her hair was a tangled mess. But her clothes were fairly clean and looked to be her size rather than thrift shop ‘that’ll do’ sized ones. Her nails were painted a soft coral, though chipped and a single ring rested on her thumb - a simple gold band.

  Bounce chilled for her sake but after she said her simple statement both of them looked at her as if she had grown a cupcake on her forehead. Bounce stepped up still skeptical and said softly, “Your father was a what?”

  The girl stepped into the room and looked from the god to Reno. “He was a Relay. A Bridge. He told me all about the Grid. It was just him and me. My mom died three years ago.”

  Reno frowned and walked over too and looked down at her. “Where’s your dad?”

  The girl seemed to wilt as she sat down at the glass and steel table and finally let go of her bag, but keeping it close in front of her. “He’s dead. About two weeks ago.”

  Reno looked at Bounce and sat down across from the girl as the god stayed a distance, appearing sympathetic, but his suspicion not even close to being hid.

  “What was his name?”

  The girl looked up at Bounce and nodded. “Chris Davidson.” She then went to reach into her bag and Bounce slammed the palm of his hand on it to stop her.

  She blinked up at him and said softly, “I’ve got his papers. And the reason the Eaters were after me is in here. Why would I bring a weapon? There’s two of you and one of me. I’m not that stupid. I’m really not stupid at all.”

  Bounce actually let a small smi
le show on his lips at that as he lifted his hand to allow her to dig around in her bag. “What is your name?”

  The girl stayed focused on digging in the large messenger bag and murmured in reply, “Bella.”

  She couldn’t seem to find what she was looking for so she stood to dump the contents of the bag out on the table. A package of Skittles fell free along with several packages of those crackers with the weird cheese, a can of soda, various sample bottles of shampoo, lotion and toothpaste, as well as a travel toothbrush and hairbrush. But what stood out was a thick folder with the Grid symbol embellished on the front.

  It was worn, smudged with ink and fingerprints, and Reno couldn’t help but notice a bloody handprint on the edge.

  He looked up at Bounce as the god reached out to take it with a look of puzzlement and concern on his face. Bella sat down and seemed to melt into the chair in exhaustion; Reno wondered how many days it had been since the kid slept.

  Bounce flipped open the file folder and his breath caught for inside were the schematics and diagrams of each Grid sub-station around the city. As he turned each page, he frowned and asked Bella without looking up at her, “Where did you get this?”

  Bella sighed. “I told you. My dad was a Relay. A Bridge relay.” She got up and before Reno could warn her about how Bounce was weird about his personal space, she was standing next to the god and pointing. “See the name on the bottom of the drawing things? That’s his name. My dad. My last name is Davidson, too.”

  Bounce glanced sideways at her and looked back at the papers. “I’ll need to check these facts. We have had hundreds of Relays. But if he was an engineer it won’t take long.” The god closed the folder and asked quietly with his fingers brushing the bloodstain on the front as he looked at Bella, “Whose blood?”

  The girl wrapped around herself again at the question.

  Bounce and Reno could almost feel her putting up mental walls against the pain as her arms went around her chest, and her chin went down as she sat back down slowly.