Phantom Shadows

by Dianne Duvall

  Are you okay?

  The voice was female. Soft, low, and such a shock it actually helped him weather the storm.

  Zach looked toward the ladder.

  A head full of fiery orange curls popped into view as bright green eyes peered at him over the edge of the roof.

  Zach stared at her. It was the woman Seth and David had rescued from the mercenaries two or three years ago.

  The woman from another planet.

  When he made no move to leave, she must have taken it as an invitation, because she finished scaling the ladder and clambered up onto the roof.

  Zach braced himself to dive after her if she should lose her footing. Seth would blame him if she fell, and Zach really wasn’t up for whatever Seth would want to dish out in retribution.

  She was amazingly sure-footed for a mortal, her small, sneaker-clad feet carrying her up the rise with ease, then across the peak to his side.

  I like your wings.

  So she was telepathic. Thank you?

  She smiled and seated herself next to him. May I join you?

  He noticed she didn’t ask until she had already done so. It almost made him smile. Perhaps if he hadn’t been in so much pain . . . Okay.

  Do you mind if we talk like this instead of out loud? I get the feeling you don’t want the others to know you’re here and they’ll come running—well, Marcus and Seth will at least—if they hear us talking.

  I would rather not have company, so this will do.

  Good.

  How did you know I was here?

  I felt your pain. Are you all right? Is there anything I can do?

  Damn. No wonder Seth and everyone else adored her. She didn’t even know him and was up here offering to help him.

  I’m all right.

  Why don’t you ask Seth or David to heal you?

  He shook his head. That would blow the whole I’m not really here thing.

  She nodded.

  Don’t you fear me? With her history, he would’ve thought she would be terrified of him. He was, after all, aware of the anxiety that struck her whenever she encountered strangers.

  And he was as strange a stranger as she would meet.

  No.

  Why?

  She shrugged. You remind me of Seth.

  Well, hell.

  I suppose I should ask . . . Are you friend or foe?

  That was a head-scratcher. Neither?

  If you’re not one, you’re the other.

  If only things were that simple.

  She shivered. The cold must be creeping in through her jacket.

  Gritting his teeth, he spread his wings, then drew them in close to form a shield that insulated her from the wintery wind.

  She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. I knew you were a friend.

  He swore silently, then apologized when he remembered she could hear it.

  She grinned. Opening up the front of her jacket, she reached inside.

  Was she going for a weapon? Immortals and their Seconds did lean toward violence.

  Plastic rattled.

  When she withdrew her hand, she clutched two lollipops.

  He drew in a breath. One was blueberry. One was strawberry.

  Which do you prefer? Strawberryyyyyy? She waved the pink candy under his nose. Or blueberry? Strawberryyyyyyyy? Again she waved it just beneath his nose. Or blueberry?

  Hmmm. Let me think. Strawberry?

  Perfect! She handed him the pink one.

  He smiled. It felt . . . peculiar . . . almost as if he were trying out a foreign language for the first time.

  She unwrapped her blueberry lollipop and slipped it between her lips.

  Zach unwrapped the strawberry lollipop and stuck it in his mouth. Sweet strawberry flavor flooded his taste buds.

  She smiled. They’re good, right?

  He nodded and smoothed his tongue over the tasty candy.

  Quiet enfolded them. Night creatures occasionally broke it, as did the various conversations and sparring sounds from the house, though he supposed Ami couldn’t hear those.

  The wispy clouds parted. Moonlight glinted off the solar panels below them. Fog hovered above David’s tidy lawn, shifting and swirling with the breeze.

  So? she said at length. You know what I am.

  Yes. Curiosity drove him to ask, Do you know what I am?

  She tilted her head to one side and studied him. I suspect I do.

  Interesting. How much had Seth confided in her?

  Minutes passed while they whittled down their lollipops. When both were left with only sticks, she drew out two more.

  Which one do I prefer this time? he asked.

  She grinned. Orange mango.

  He held out his hand and accepted the yellow/orange lollipop. She unwrapped a pink one that carried a delicious watermelon scent for herself.

  It took him until the end of the second candy to realize that some of his pain had ebbed. He heard Marcus asking someone below if they had seen Ami.

  Your husband is looking for you.

  She rose and made her way over to the ladder.

  Zach watched her carefully until she planted her feet on a rung. What will you tell him?

  She descended a few rungs until only her eyes and fiery hair were visible. The truth. That I needed some fresh air.

  Thank you.

  Her eyes smiled. You’re welcome.

  He listened to her descent. The ladder swung away from the house and disappeared. Her small feet swished through the grass again, then scaled the few steps to the deck. The back door opened, then closed.

  Various immortals and mortals called greetings to her as she walked through the house and down the basement stairs.

  “Hi, sweetie.”

  “Hi, babe. Hey, you’re cold. Have you been outside?”

  “Yes. I needed some fresh air.”

  He heard them share a quick kiss. “Mmm. You taste like blueberries and watermelon.”

  “I stole some of your lollipops.”

  “Really. Well, if you’re in the mood to lick something . . .”

  She laughed.

  “We can hear you,” Seth called.

  “So?” Marcus countered and kissed his wife again.

  “So she’s like a daughter to me, jackass.”

  “Yeah,” David seconded. “There’s a reason I poured thousands of dollars into soundproofing your bedroom.”

  “Hmm.” Marcus sounded thoughtful. “I do believe your family is trying to tell me I should take you to bed.”

  “That isn’t what I—oh screw it,” Seth muttered.

  Marcus laughed. “Let’s go warm you up.”

  Ami chuckled.

  A moment later a door closed.

  Zach’s feathers fluttered in the biting wind.

  He looked down at the short white sticks he twirled between his fingers, all that remained of the two lollipops.

  They were the only gifts he had ever received in his long existence.

  Conversations started and stopped, overlapped and interrupted, down in the house.

  Zach rose stiffly. Again, he was forced to hold his breath until the agony the movement had spawned eased. His fingers continued to toy with the white sticks.

  Shaking his head at himself, he tucked them into one of the pockets of his leather pants.

  Utterly pathetic.

  Gritting his teeth, he bent his knees, leapt up, swept his powerful wings down, and lost himself amid the night sky.

  Chapter 16

  Dappled sunlight tumbled down, dodging the barren branches of deciduous trees and bouncing off the leaves of evergreens until it could fall in clumsy polka dot patterns on the two men below.

  Quieter than mice, the tall, dark figures made their way through the brush.

  “This isn’t right,” David announced.

  Seth eyed David’s grim countenance. “I know. But it’s necessary.”

  “We promised her we wouldn’t deny her vengeance.”

&nbs
p; “Actually we didn’t. You said we couldn’t deny her vengeance, not that we wouldn’t.”

  “You’re splitting hairs.”

  “I would rather Ami be pissed at me than risk losing her, physically or mentally, if something should go awry that allowed Emrys to get his hands on her.”

  They had told no one of their intentions. David’s house had been quiet, save the sounds of slumber, when they had teleported away without a word.

  No words spoken aloud, that is.

  We’re getting close, David told him.

  Seth knew David saw the wisdom of their handling this alone. That battle at network headquarters had been too close. Humans had died. Dr. Lipton had been forced to transform. At least one of the vampires had been captured by the mercenaries and was now most likely suffering the same torture Ami had.

  Seth wasn’t willing to risk that happening again.

  They were going to meet Emrys on his home turf. The fire- and manpower the mercenaries had brought to the network would likely be nothing compared to what they possessed at their base. But Seth and David had breeched Emrys’s compound in Texas. Had, in fact, burned it to the ground.

  They would do the same today.

  Just the two of them.

  No Seconds or immortals would be killed. Ami would remain safe, tucked in the protective arms of her husband. And the threat the Immortal Guardians faced from the human world would be destroyed.

  Almost there, David said. He had followed a couple of soldiers from the attack on the network to their base, but told only Seth its location.

  I’m going to do a little recon, Seth announced.

  David nodded.

  Wings sprang from Seth’s back and his clothing fell away as he shifted forms and took to the air. The tips of his feathers brushed branches as he found a break wide enough to allow him freedom from the trees.

  Once he flew high above the earth, he saw exactly what David had described: two buildings in the center of a clearing. One was a two-story brick building with few windows. The other was a steel hangar. The open door of the latter revealed a solitary vehicle—what appeared to be a broken-down Humvee.

  A pool of asphalt formed a small parking lot beside the main building. Weeds slain by winter’s chill dotted the ground around it. A fence strung with razor wire circled all. But that fence boasted no guards. Nor did the gate—closed and padlocked—at the sole entrance.

  Seth sailed past, then swooped around to backtrack. Surveillance cameras clung to the corners of the building, but he could detect no hum of electricity that would indicate they were functioning.

  He listened carefully for a moment longer, then returned to David, who waited patiently in the shadows of the nearby forest.

  “We have a problem,” he announced as he regained and clothed his form with a thought.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “No one is manning the gate. And I detected no heartbeats within the building.”

  David frowned. “There were men there last night. Many of them.”

  “Did you see them or did you hear their heartbeats?”

  “Both.”

  “So there’s no chance they could be blocking us?”

  “No. Not unless they’ve developed a method of doing so within the past few hours. And I have no idea what they could do to block you.”

  Seth hated surprises. He really did. They were so rarely good. “Well, let’s go ahead and see what happens.”

  “Do you want to take the Texas approach?”

  Seth thought about it. He just wasn’t sensing anything. “No. What do you say we simply take a stroll?”

  David smiled. “It’s a nice blustery day for it.”

  Laughing, Seth walked through the forest to the break in the trees with David by his side.

  They paused as though by prior agreement.

  “I don’t sense anything either,” David murmured. “The place has a totally different feel to it than when I was here before.”

  They strode to the fence and climbed it like humans, careful to avoid the sharp razor wire. If anyone did keep watch through those surveillance cameras, all they would see is two unusually tall men trespassing.

  Across the field, then over the blacktop they ambled. No mercenaries raced out to meet them. No bullets struck from concealed snipers. No guard dogs charged, barking and frothing at the mouth. No challenges were issued.

  Instead birds chirped. Squirrels scuttled about in the detritus littering the nearby forest floor. A hawk forged a leisurely path through the blue sky above, its shadow scampering across the ground beneath it.

  The front double doors of the building were glass, but not of the usual grade. Should someone aim an automatic weapon at them, the bullets would bounce off without so much as cracking it.

  Seth and David each grasped a door handle and opened the doors. Unlocked.

  David grimaced. “You smell that?”

  Seth nodded. Death was not a subtle scent.

  They stepped inside. The doors shushed closed behind them.

  The heavy-duty white linoleum floor was streaked with dried blood and black boot scuffs. Two hallways were divided by a vacant desk topped with a bank of surveillance monitors, all dark.

  Seth took the hallway on the left, David the one on the right. The thud of their boots hitting the floor echoed loudly in the silence. There seemed to be no electricity. The fluorescents overhead were dark. No heater droned. The temperature within the building nearly matched that outside. No heartbeat thumped, speeding at Seth’s approach. No breath stirred. No clothing rustled or weapons rattled.

  His way dimly lit by the light streaming through the front doors, Seth reached an open doorway and peered inside.

  A classroom?

  The next doorway exposed a boardroom with a long table and cushy chairs. The next a clinic, blood-spattered and chaotic. Instruments and red-stained first aid materials were strewn across the floor and every other surface. Flies buzzed around the mess left behind.

  The last room was a weight room.

  On the opposite side of the hallway, a quartet of identical locked doors with what looked like mail slots gave beneath his strength. Reinforced steel walls. Titanium chains as big as his arms. Clearly, these were rooms meant to hold any vampires or immortals they captured. Two of the rooms were pristinely clean and showed no indication that they had ever been occupied.

  The third and fourth . . .

  Bastien’s vampires must have been held in there. Based on his visits with them, Seth guessed Joe had been in the third room. There were bloodstains on one wall that indicated the incarcerated vamp had repeatedly slammed his head into it. Bloody stripes marked the other walls where he had clawed them so hard his fingernails had ripped off. A pool of dried blood on the floor smelled of the virus.

  It was a large stain. Large enough that Seth wondered if the vampire had bled out, finally finding peace in his own destruction.

  The fourth room bore many bloodstains as well. But he didn’t think enough had been lost to kill Cliff.

  You need to see this, David said.

  Seth retraced his steps up the hallway and headed down the other. Open doors revealed an office, sleeping quarters, a cafeteria, and a lounge with games and a television.

  David waited at the end of the hallway, just outside the last doorway.

  The scent of death grew to stifling proportions as Seth approached.

  He stepped inside.

  The bodies of a dozen or so soldiers, all shot in the head, had been tossed into a pile in the center of the room.

  Seth stared down into their unseeing eyes. “Why the hell would Emrys kill his own men?”

  David stepped up beside him. “I recognize a few of them from the battle. That one there. Those two. I think this one, too.”

  “The vampire king killed any of his followers who sowed dissent or spread doubt amongst the ranks. Perhaps these men rethought the wisdom of working for Emrys after coming face-to-face with immortals in
battle.”

  “Such is my guess.”

  “Let’s search the rest of the building, then check the hangar.”

  David nodded. “I’ll take the basement.”

  “I’ll head upstairs.”

  Whatever had filled the rooms upstairs had been removed. Only dust bunnies remained.

  Seth heard David curse.

  You’d better come down here, the other said.

  David met Seth at the bottom of the stairs. The basement was as large as the other floors. Death floated on the stale air down here, too.

  David motioned to the first open doorway.

  Seth looked inside and felt as though he had stepped back in time to the day he had rescued Ami. A first glance revealed an operating room. A second uncovered the manacles and leather strap that would immobilize anyone unwillingly placed on the steel table’s surface. Whatever tools of torture the butchers had utilized had been removed, leaving only discarded scrubs, a few soiled towels, and a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol turned on its side.

  “There are three more like this one,” David said and led Seth from the room.

  Offices robbed of everything save battered desks and crappy chairs followed the torture chambers. Past those . . .

  Seth stared at the bodies, shot execution style like the ones above, in the first cell. “These are civilians.”

  “Yes. There are more.”

  The dead in the basement included women and children. Some of the women still clutched their daughters or sons, their bodies curled around the little ones in an eternal gesture of protection.

  “Let’s check the hangar.”

  Aside from the disabled Humvee, the hangar boasted only oil stains and discarded lug nuts.

  Seth took out his cell phone. “How are you doing with the daylight?”

  David shrugged. “I can take another couple hours or so, more if I stay in the shade as much as possible.”

  Seth nodded and dialed.

  “Reordon,” a sleepy voice answered.

  “I need to show you something.”

  “Give me a second to throw on some clothes.”

  Seth returned his phone to his back pocket.

  “Think his men will be able to lift any prints?” David asked.

  “They should. It looks like the mercenaries cleared out in a hurry. Hell, they didn’t even lock the front door.”

  “While you go get Chris, I think I’ll search the place for trip wires or explosives. It seems odd that they would leave these bodies here for anyone to find.”