Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2)

by Spencer DeVeau

  “You may think you are, Frank King. And you may have been gifted with incredible powers because of it. How else would you have been able to see my little safe house? Or taken a shotgun blast to the arm and still be able to move it? Yes, these may seem wonderful for the moment, but you are nothing to the Shadows. They are using you. What was it they promised if you slayed the Realm Protectors?”

  He didn’t answer.

  The woman bent down, knees popping sickly as she did it. “Was it the promise of bringing back a dead loved one? Riches beyond your wildest dreams? A place at the dinner table of Satan?” She snorted. “Nothing but empty lies.”

  Sahara laughed then said: “Did you think you could really kill us?”

  “I could’ve killed you both back at the Tree,” Frank said, words shaky, spoken through grinding teeth.

  “Why didn’t you?” Sahara asked, now bent down, blade inches away from him. He could feel the heat, the danger right there by his face.

  “That was a different me,” he said again.

  “Right, and this is the better Frank King, is it not?” the old woman asked.

  He ignored her again, at least pretended to.

  A dying shriek came from the water. Vicious splashes after it.

  “FREEAT!” one of those mutants bellowed.

  “Ah, my babies must eat,” the old woman said. “Thank you for bringing them food.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled: “There’s fresh meat over here, boys!”

  Frank’s stomach lurched. He face planted into the sand again, trying to hide like an ostrich.

  “We’ll keep him warm for you!” Sahara said.

  “Fine!” Frank shouted. “Stop. Anything but those monsters.”

  “Ah, not as tough as he looks,” Sahara said.

  “We want what is inside your head, Frank. And you will be better off if we can get it out,” the old woman said. “You’ll be you again.”

  “I am me.”

  You are us, the Shadows said.

  “Not even close,” Roberta said. “Take him to the kitchen, Sahara.”

  “The kitchen?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Well, Storm isn’t here to make the venom come after him.” She paused, took a deep breath. “That’s all it really wants is Harold. So we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. And the kitchen has the sharpest knives.”

  Frank whimpered, hoping it wasn’t audible. But it undoubtedly was.

  Failure.

  Rule Number Eight: You fail, you die.

  He swallowed hard, then Sahara yanked him up, her Deathblade now gone, but the hilt pressed into his back. Behind them, he could feel the old woman’s smile burning into the back of his head. And he entered the Lake, bar and grill, for the first time in nearly three decades with, once more, another odd group.

  CHAPTER 31

  Chet’s bar was ruined. Somehow it looked worse off than the Lake’s Bar and Grill had. Half of the roof was missing, and that didn’t do much to help, neither did the Demon. Not one like the one he’d seen at the Vampire’s place. This one was much, much bigger and vicious. Like a dinosaur, its heads even bigger than the one Orkane’s sword had been lodged inside of.

  A few uniformed officers, though their outfits were tattered, hid between an overturned city bus and the ruined remains of a long-defunct bowling alley where Harold knew most of the crackheads — some friends — used as a house when the ice and snow came to town. The wheels of the bus pointed outwards toward the Demon, and the cops unloaded their pistols into his thick, bubbly flesh.

  Each time a gun went off, a burst of black blood sprayed from its armor, and it shrieked like a dying jet engine. Moved like it had a buzzsaw going off in its pants.

  Harold watched from the street corner, near a traffic light pole that leaned onto a brick apartment building, the corner of the metal rammed through a third floor window. The street he was on had once been a drug dealer’s paradise. Guys with pants that hung down to their knees, guns stuffed in their coat pockets, and gold chains that shined even on a gloomy, gray day would’ve been breathing down his neck had the circumstance been normal. He wondered where they were now. Wondered if when faced with a monster like the one around the corner, if they had still acted tough.

  Probably not.

  The gunshots stopped almost all at once, filling his ears with a sudden silence — an unnatural city quiet — and brought him back into the moment. Then the Demon roared again, swung a claw into the metal of the bus. He peeked around as glass exploded. The metal crunched and whined. Harold thought of the sounds of a horrible car accident.

  And when it moved, he saw, strung up like a frozen carcass in a meat locker, a body hanging by its ankles from a telephone wire. It was limp, unmoving. Most likely dead. Harold’s heart thudded harder. His eyes might’ve been playing tricks on him, or it could’ve been the fear, or the Shadows in his mind, but he swore the body looked a lot like Chet. Wrinkled skin, a thin layer of graying hair. Even the white shirt and the black vest like he was some kind of senile Han Solo. It could’ve been Chet. Had to be Chet.

  That’s what he needed as much as it unnerved him.

  Be Chet, he thought. Let them have already killed him.

  The rage would fill him with a strength the sword or the Wolves could not. And he had to ride out the wave of anger as best as he could.

  But it never came.

  So instead, he gripped the hilt of Orkane’s sword, felt a momentary jolt of power. The Wolves. Howling. The Pack. Him, the Alpha. It gave him strength, but not knowledge. Sure he could go in there guns blazing, but where would that get him besides squashed? It wasn’t much better of a plan than going up against the monster that nearly stood two stories while Harold was blinded by rage.

  Even if he’d had his Deathblade, he wasn’t invincible. And there was still that slight problem of the Shadows in his brain. He hadn’t heard from them in awhile. Not since acquiring the sword, but they were still there, and no doubt they’d try to sabotage him when he needed to focus the most.

  Chet was priority number one.

  He took deep breaths.

  What if Chet wasn’t there at all? What if he failed? Then the cops would be next.

  No, that plan wouldn’t work.

  He would have to draw the Demon away from them, and he was mighty good at getting a Demon’s attention. Hell, that one bashing the bus, making the ground all around him shake, was probably in Hell, watching from the coliseum while Harold sacrificed his key. There had been so many. All those dark and yellow eyes. No doubt the big ones could’ve just blended in.

  His legs moved, though his brain and heart did everything to try to stop him. In the middle of the ruined street he stood — the chaos surrounding him, broken buildings, death and debris.

  Without the rage, there was fear. Without the Deathblade and his real Wolves, there was emptiness.

  Loose newspapers blew across the road. His eyes followed them, trying to imagine that everything would go smoothly.

  In his hand, the sword weighed about a thousand pounds, but he held it up above his head, near his left cauliflower ear, like a baseball player ready to hit a home run — a grand slam, bring home the win.

  “Hey, asshole!” he shouted.

  It was enough to stop the creature’s roars.

  “Time to die!”

  And he broke into a sprint.

  CHAPTER 32

  When Frank woke up, the Shadows seemed to be floating right in front of his face. He gasped for breath as if he’d swallowed the toxic lake water — how it burned his lungs, his throat, his nostrils — and someone had thumped his chest until it spewed from his mouth like some kind of black volcano.

  The visions in his head had been haunting; the faces had been terrible. But he had recognized them, and that did enough to make him wish the black water had actually drowned him.

  “He’s up?” Sahara said. “You’re tougher than I thought.”

  “How do you feel?” the old woman said
. She still looked as horrific as she had when he’d met her on the beach, but for some reason, she wasn’t the embodiment of evil the Shadows had made her out to be.

  He tried to get up, the pain in his ribs searing, burning. The old woman — Roberta, was her name, he thought — raised a hand, then gently touched his shoulder, guiding him back down onto the cold metal table he had woken up on.

  The Shadows disappeared. Above him, a rickety light fixture swung low. The air was musty and dank, but somehow fresh. He could taste the sawdust, like a newly constructed home. Blinking a few times, letting it all settle in, he looked around. Wherever he was, was a lot nicer than the restaurant. The place was almost elaborate compared to that shithole. But how had he gotten there? And why did his body ache so much?

  Not listening to Roberta, he pushed himself up. Pain struck him like a lightning bolt, but he powered through it. There was something he was supposed to do, a mission, a goal, then he could rest. But what in the holy Hell was it?

  His hands skittered across the edges of the metal, looking for some purchase, and not finding any. But what he did find, nearly made him fall over in fear — something black, slimy, ropy, yet strong like a jungle vine. And Frank was not normally one to be scared. He had killed the nastiest of…Demons.

  Demons, why was he remembering Demons?

  Because you are one of us, a voice whispered in his head.

  He screamed, letting go, rolling off of the table and onto the hard floor.

  “Yeah, gross, huh?” Sahara asked. The redheaded woman who’d possessed a power Frank did not totally comprehend stood over him, extended a hand down to help him up.

  He recoiled yet didn’t know why. It was just a regular hand.

  “That stuff was squirming all through you. Thank Roberta here. She’s a master surgeon. Plus she had some practice on me.” The redhead rolled her sleeve up to reveal a faded red line running up her arm.

  Roberta shook her head, face twisted up into a grimace that somehow made her pallid flesh look better. “Do not speak of that. I did what I had to do. Sometimes the venom just acts on its own accord.”

  Frank stood now, legs wobbly, head fuzzy. He shook, caught eyes with the fresh wounds running down the lengths of his bare arms. His shirt was off, too. How had he not noticed it until now?

  One of his father’s rules flashed in his mind again. But he’d forgotten the number, and actually, most of the rule, just knew it consisted of always being aware of your surroundings or some shit like that. He didn’t care, honestly. That ship had sailed a long time ago.

  All he’d cared about at the moment was that hauntingly pained face that had floated in the Shadows, the skin paler than the corpse that stood over him, the eyes deader than the black ropes that coiled near the table.

  His son’s face. Travis King. Dead. Murdered. Skewered by a blade. Deathly black to match the dark figure’s eyes.

  “What happened to my arms?” he asked, voice gruff.

  “We had to get the Shadows out of you somehow,” Sahara said.

  “Shadows?”

  “You were quite a handful before you were drained of the venom,” Roberta said, nodding with squinted eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said. He looked to the snakes or the Shadows, whatever was in his body, almost transfixed, almost hearing those familiar faint whispers.

  “Yeah, murder was on your mind. You should’ve heard the things you were muttering in between screams. It was something straight out of a Stephen King novel. Any relation?” Sahara asked.

  Frank shook his head. “What was I muttering?”

  “Just the usual kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, murder garbage a man with violent tendencies and possessed by an even more violent Hellspawn would say.” She shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t heard before. You probably won’t remember it. Not unless you swallow those snakes again, but the Squeebs have already laid claim to that idea.”

  “Why me? Why help me?”

  “Easy,” Roberta said. Her back was turned to him and she fiddled with a meat cleaver that looked older than Frank and dripped with a thick, black sludge. “You have seen things that I have not.”

  “Like what?”

  “You tell me,” she answered.

  Frank took a deep breath. The strength in his legs had begun to come back slightly, and the clouds in his head were starting to clear, the sun poking through the grayness. Still, he had not remembered much. Just feelings, really. Dark, sinister feelings he was not proud to have felt. How would his father react had he still been alive and found out that his son had bent to the will of the very evil that generations of the King family had vowed to slay?

  Not good, he thought. Not good at all. And being around the redheaded woman with an unnatural aura about her as well as the dead woman who looked more like a Witch than anything resembling a human being, did not do well to quell that uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. But he couldn’t run, couldn’t fight. There was something wrong. And he hated it.

  “I-I don’t know what I saw. I don’t remember.”

  “That can be fixed,” Sahara said.

  The two women exchanged very different smiles; Frank’s eyes widened at the contrast between the two.

  “Yes, there is some in the closet,” Roberta said.

  “Some of what?” Frank grumbled.

  He stood a little straighter. Maybe he could fight after all. But he was always reluctant to hit a woman, even if she was a Witch. And the way the redhead carried herself told him she didn’t like to fuck around. She’d gut you at the very first moment she had reason to.

  “My crossbow,” he said. “Where’s my crossbow?”

  Roberta raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t come with a crossbow. Did he, Sahara?”

  “No, just a shotgun, a pistol, and two Demonic assholes,” Sahara said before going around the corner. Frank could hear her ruffling through glass bottles. They clinked, hissed, threatened to shatter. He peeked around the corner, saw a wall like a winery, except there were not wine bottles filling each holder. Wispy clouds of different colored smoke danced in each one instead. They seemed to whisper too, calling his name, crying out for him.

  For help.

  He shook his head, looked back at the corpse, who had a smug smile on her face.

  “You hear them, don’t you?” Roberta asked.

  “Nothing I haven’t heard before,” he grumbled. His arms really burned and he could hear it in his voice.

  “I bet you have, Frank King. You’re almost a Protector yourself…in a way.”

  “I don’t know what the Hell you’re on about, woman, but I’m no hero.”

  She nodded. “Not yet,” she said.

  Sahara came around the corner holding a vial of purple liquid, more solid than he’d originally thought. “Here, drink this,” she said.

  “No,” he answered with a tone of finality.

  “Yes,” she said, thrusting the vial towards him, almost right in his face. “Because Travis, the name you muttered over and over needs you to.”

  “How do you know about Travis?”

  “I don’t, but from what you babbled on about, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. And I can practically smell the revenge all over you.”

  He said nothing, stayed silent because he’d felt embarrassed. What else could he have said while under whatever they had done to him? He didn’t want to know. It was almost the equivalent of being too deep in his cups, spouting off dark secrets to an equally drunk stranger.

  “And I know who you want,” she said. “The black eyes. The horrible breath. Business suit. Slicked-back hair.”

  Frank’s stomach wrenched, as if the snakes had still been inside of him.

  “His names is Charlie.”

  Charlie. The name had rung a bell, but he couldn’t put a face to it. It was like speaking of a long-lost friend.

  “He’s the lowest form of scum. And I know him almost too well,” Sahara continued.

  “You’re a friend?” h
e asked, feeling his muscles flex, but with it came the burning pain from freshly closed wounds.

  Sahara snorted, which broke into a full, hearty laughter. She pushed her sleeve up on her other arm, revealing more scars, faded scars. Frank sensed the power there, but forgot once he saw the dull lines. Scars from many years ago. Scars that would never heal beyond what they looked like now. Gruesome and unsettling.

  “What kinda friend would do that?” she asked.

  “So what? I drink this and — ”

  “We see what you saw. Know what you know. It gives a small chance to help our friend and hopefully get you your revenge.”

  “I thought you were a Protector or whatever the Hell you called it,” Frank said. “Revenge ain’t protecting.”

  Sahara smiled slyly.

  Roberta nodded in agreement. “The loss of your own child is one instance where I encourage revenge,” she said. “And if you tell us what you saw — better yet, you show us — then I can guarantee revenge.”

  He snatched the vial, oddly cold in his fist, as if it should’ve been frozen or at least frosty. But it wasn’t and the freezing temperature bit into the palm of his hand, which made up his decision to down the purple goo. He’d never pass on a drink that had a little bit of a sting to it.

  It had hit him instantly. The world spun; the women’s faces faded and fizzled like the static of a dead television channel. He saw it all. The type of thing he had been in the short span of time the venom had completely consumed him. How he was when the Shadows choked his brain, controlled his body like a puppet master controlling a dummy.

  The murder. The blood.

  The Shadows.

  There were bodies. A field of bones. Trees that gnarled and zigged and zagged like harsh, Demonic corners. They reached out for his throat, meant to shove their branches down his esophagus until he couldn’t breathe.

  They called for him. Told him to climb those wooden steps at the base of an unmarked grave. As he got closer, the heat was almost unbearable.