Born of Shadow (Shadow Walkers Book 1)

by Richard Murray

  “Where you attacked us!”

  She reached for a towel that had been draped over the back of a chair and wiped at her face. Clearing away as much of the blood as she could before she let the towel fall to the floor and stood tall, staring down her nose at me.

  “Your kind come,” she said. “They kill my children and disrupt our lives. We just want to live in peace.”

  “No,” I said as I futilely tried to shake my head in denial. “You made me do things at the club.”

  “Pah!” she spat. “I only removed your inhibitions. You did nothing you didn’t want to do.”

  “You took my friend.”

  “I captured one of the group that had attacked me,” she replied as she smoothed down the front of her midnight black evening gown.

  “You bit her,” I said though I didn’t want to believe it. “You’ve turned her into one of you.”

  “A fitting fate for your vile kind.”

  She shook out her hair and once again, brushed off the front of her gown as though trying to make herself presentable. To face her end with dignity, even grace. Her eyes met mine once more and whatever power she held over me was gone.

  “You’ve murdered all those I loved, finish your evil task,” she said with such quiet dignity that I sagged.

  “But you’re the bad guy,” I said and wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand. “One of your kind killed my parents. You turned my friend… you’re monsters!”

  “Foolish little girl,” Anahella said so softly I could barely hear her. “Do you really think the world is so simple?”

  She shook her head and a faint smile curved the corners of her mouth. “Good and evil… it’s all just a matter of perception. We feed on humans and grow our families and you hunt us for it. Our only crime was to exist and you dare to call us evil as you slaughter my family.”

  I looked up and met her gaze as she said that and her smile widened.

  “Your friends lied to you,” she said as I strode towards her. “Bitter little humans fuelled by hatred. They had no reason to hunt us other than because they could. Do you really think they care about saving people?”

  “Maybe not,” I replied as I wiped away the tears. My whole world had just collapsed around me. Everything I thought I was doing was a lie and I was at fault. “But you turned my friend into one of you.”

  My blade slid between her ribs as easily as a hot knife through butter. Her eyes widened just slightly as an exhalation of breath left her mouth and the fire raged beneath her skin. Ash fell to the ground and I let my arm drop.

  The dagger I’d used to kill her had been the one with the bat headed pommel and that seemed oddly appropriate for some reason.

  “Dammit!” Jo shouted as she stormed into the room. “That was my kill.”

  “You lied to me,” I said without looking at her as I knelt down beside my friend.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “We’re the monsters.” I slid the blades back into the sheaths behind my back then lifted Evie into my embrace. Her skin was cold to the touch and her breath, so shallow as to be almost non-existent.

  “Lena?” Patrik said and I looked up to him as he peered down at me, a fresh cut on his cheek. “Your friend is hurt?”

  “Bitten,” I said.

  “Turned,” Jo almost snarled as her face twisted in disgust. “Kill her now and be done with it.”

  “No,” I said and looked directly into her eyes. There was no kindness there, no compassion for me, for my friend. Nothing but hatred and I wondered how I’d missed it before.

  “Then I’ll do it,” she replied and I shrugged. All fight had gone from me and I knew that without Evie, without that one person who had shown me any sort of read friendship since my parents had been killed, I had no reason to live anyway.

  “Nei,” Patrik said. “Jo, don’t do this.”

  “One less vamp to kill later,” she replied as she readied her knife.

  “You’ll need to kill me too,” I told her. Why not? I had nothing left. Everything had been taken from me. First my parents and now my friend. The only person I loved in the messed up, cruel joke of a world.

  “Fine,” she said as she stalked forward.

  No, something inside of me said. A refusal to back down, to give up on my friend, to give up on us! I’d been lied to, betrayed and used. Anger filled me. No, rage did. Beyond anything I’d felt before, a storm of righteous fury that demanded an answer.

  The shadows in the room lengthened as the lights flickered and dimmed. A smile formed on Jo’s face as she laughed out loud.

  “Don’t be a fool!” she said. “Use your power and you’ll kill yourself.”

  “I don’t care. You’re not having her!”

  She was right though. I could feel it in my gut, in the way that my arms trembled as I held her. Everything I’d had I’d used earlier, to shadow walk with Barry. A storm raged inside of me but no shadows covered my skin, no power came at my call… but something did.

  An old darkness that I’d borne for thirteen years. Caught in a cage of scarred flesh, it wanted, no demanded, to be used. An ocean of oily black power that seemed to stain my soul just by looking at it.

  As Jo raised her knife towards me, I reached for that power and the world went black.

  Chapter 24

  It wasn’t darkness like any I’d known before. It was an absence of light so profound that even with the night vision provided by my powers, I couldn’t penetrate it. I only knew that Evie was still in my arms because I could feel the cold touch of her skin against mine.

  I wasn’t entirely sure where I was, but I was confident that we were no longer at the vampire’s home. It felt, very much like the place between worlds that I had oh so briefly entered to shadow walk.

  There was a sense of a formless void stretching off into infinity and around us, something, no something’s, that were vast almost beyond comprehension, shifted uneasily at our presence.

  As the seconds passed I became aware of a buzzing in the back of my mind, like that of a thousand angry insects hovering around me. If I concentrated, I could almost make out words in some language utterly alien that slowly began to change until I could understand it, becoming a chorus of voices.

  WHAT IS IT?

  FOOD? CAN WE EAT IT?

  IS IT US?

  NOT US, HUMAN

  SMELLS LIKE US

  NO, SMELLS LIKE POWER

  HOW IS IT HERE

  SHALL WE EAT IT? A voice repeated, sounding almost hopeful.

  I wasn’t sure how many voices were speaking but I knew damned well that at least one of them wanted to eat us and that couldn’t be good.

  “Hello?” I called out into the void.

  IT SPEAKS!

  NOT FOOD THEN?

  WE COULD EAT IT another voice added and a shiver ran through me. I was really starting to dislike that particular voice.

  TASTE ITS POWER

  MAKE IT OURS

  “ENOUGH!”

  The final voice was different and spoke with a commanding authority that silenced all of the others. I twisted my head as I tried to look in all directions but the darkness was absolute, impenetrable.

  Slowly, seemingly before me, the darkness began to change. It didn’t lighten, that would have been the wrong way to describe it. No, it was more like the darkness was still there, just… less. And in its place, a figure began to take shape. A man.

  His hair was cut short and parted to the side, colour impossible to tell in the eternal darkness of that place. Narrow face and kind eyes full of warmth. It was a face I knew, one I’d seen so many times in my dreams as I watched him die over and over again.

  “Daddy?”

  “I’m here my darling child,” he said in a voice that I remembered oh so well.

  “It can’t be you! It’s a trick!”

  “No,” he said with such calm assurance that I almost believed him. I wante
d oh so very badly to believe him.

  “You’re dead! Am I… am I dead?”

  “Not yet,” he said with a touch of warm humour in his voice. “Not for a very long time I hope.”

  “How is this possible?”

  “That is a long story and not for the telling now,” he replied with a half- smile. “Suffice to say, I am your father and you are very much alive and in a place where you shouldn’t be.”

  “What is this place?”

  “This is the single point in creation where light first blossomed in the darkness and created shadows. Created our kind.”

  “Demons,” I said and the buzzing sounded once again in the back of my mind. It sounded angry.

  “Not quite,” he replied with that smile fixed firmly in place. “We were the firstborn children of creation and we wait here, in the darkness for the light to return.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand. Are you really a demon?”

  He sighed as he settled cross-legged before me. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was sitting on. If it was anything at all. I daren’t release my hold on Evie to feel below me but I was fairly certain there was no ground beneath us.

  “I am one of the First,” he said with a slight bow of his head. “And you, my dear child, are the first daughter I have ever sired. My firstborn child of shadow.”

  “Why?” I asked and he looked at me quizzically so I added, “Why did you come to earth? Why possess my dad? Why did you have a baby?”

  “So many questions,” he said and laughed. A warm, rich sound that was so familiar to me that a rush of memories washed over me and tears once again, sprang to my eyes. “Just like when you were little.”

  “I remember, I think.”

  “Someone summoned me to your realm,” he said with a fond smile for me. “There was a reason that he wanted me there but I refused.”

  “Sephtis,” I said and he nodded, his smile faltering.

  “Yes. The body I had been summoned into was a trap.”

  “How?”

  “It was a dead man, technically. He was brain-dead and in a coma. An empty vessel awaiting a host.”

  “What made it a trap?”

  “Since there was no soul there he was able to bind it with spells that prevented my leaving. At least he thought he did.”

  “You could leave?”

  “Oh yes though it took some time to be able to do so.”

  “Why didn’t you then or is that why you left that night?”

  “I met your mother,” he said and a wistful smile returned to his face. He noticed my sceptical look and his smile widened. “She was like seeing the light for the first time. Again. I found her and fell in love.”

  “You stayed for her?”

  “For the both of you,” he agreed. “To leave the body would have been possible but to do so would expel me back here. Before meeting your mother, that was my plan, but afterward… ah, I had no desire to leave.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Sephtis found us. Being in that human form I was weak. A bare fraction of my power available to me and because of that I could not save your mother from him before I managed to drive him away.”

  “I remember,” I said in a small voice. How could I forget that night?

  “With your mother dead and you so close to death as to make no real difference, I made a choice and one that I would make again though it caused you such pain,” he said. “I freed myself from the body and did what I could to save you before I was forced back here.”

  “What did you do to save me?” I asked. “There’s something inside of me…”

  “That power I did have, I gave to you. Used it to bind your wounds and keep you alive until aid could come.”

  “It’s still in me, it’s what brought me here.”

  “You and your companion,” my dad said with a raised eyebrow as he looked towards Evie. “Someone who is transitioning into a vampire at that.”

  “She was bitten,” I said. “Forced to drink vampire blood I think.”

  “That’s usually how it goes.”

  “Will she be a monster?” I asked and heard the pleading in my voice. That hope for an answer that would allow me to have my friend back.

  “Was she a monster before?” he asked and I shook my head.

  “No,” I said with a sob. “She was the best person I knew.”

  “Then I see very little reason that will change,” he replied as he reached out one hand and pressed his fingertips gently against Evie’s forehead. “It will be hard for her. When a human changes, that change can emphasize their personality. All the good, all the bad, will be amplified and sometimes the bad will become greater than the good.”

  “So if she was a good person before, she’ll still be that way?”

  “More than likely,” he said. “There’s a good chance at least. The change is never quite the same. By all accounts, Sephtis was once a good man who simply harboured bad thoughts. When he changed, he was given the chance to act on those thoughts with impunity and he did so.”

  “She’ll be fine,” I said and didn’t care that my voice was filled with hope.

  “Even now she dreams of you.” My dad smiled as he said it and didn’t comment on the blush that heated my cheeks. “If she struggles, be her compass.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “Good. Now you must go from here and not return.”

  “What? Why?” I’d just found him again and the thought of leaving, never seeing him again had my stomach lurching.

  “This is a place beyond life,” he said. “While here you will feel no pain, no hunger, nothing. Even though your body is dying.”

  “What!”

  “I’ll repair what I can but you will need rest and shelter. Plenty of fuel to help your body repair itself,” he said. “I’ll send you back to your realm but you need to choose a destination.”

  That was a problem. I couldn’t exactly go back to Jo and Patrik’s house since they wanted to kill Evie and I was fairly sure that they weren’t the heroes I’d thought they were. Nor could I go back to my bedsit, since I would be found there.

  Abe’s words came back to me though and I thought of his place in the woods. A place where I could rest and I suspected he’d return to in search of me. The worrying question was, could I trust that he’d come alone.

  Ultimately, I had little choice and once Evie woke up, she’d need me and I had no idea what kind of mental state she’d be in. Plus, Sephtis was out there with plans for me. Only he knew what those plans were but I needed to figure out some way to avoid them and the hunters who’d be after us.

  “One last question,” I said as a thought occurred to me and he nodded, hand half raised towards me.

  “Ask it and then picture your chosen destination. I shall send you there.”

  “You said this place was the where the light first came to the darkness and made shadows, yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t have a shadow out of nothing. Something had to be between the light and the dark to cast a shadow.”

  “Indeed,” he said with a grin that showed teeth. “There was something.”

  “What?”

  “Why, the creator,” he said. “We were born out of the shadow of God. A being who stood in the darkness of their creation and brought forth light.”

  “So you’re not evil…” I said and he laughed.

  “We are that which exists between good and evil. We are the potential to be the greatest of either end of the spectrum,” he paused a moment and his hand touched my forehead. I could feel the warmth against my skin and a tear slipped down my cheek as he said, “Like you are, my darling child of shadow.”

  And with his words, reality shifted and I knew what I had to do. Marie and her hunters weren’t out saving people, they were pursuing a vendetta. The Supernaturals and the hunters were engaged in a war with the humans stuck in between. S
omeone needed to stand up for them in the way I’d thought Jo and the others did. If no one else would do it, then it was up to me.

  I opened my eyes to find myself in the centre of Abe’s living room with Evie in my arms. Her eyes fluttered open as I gazed down at her and a smile slowly formed on her face.

  “Wake up my friend,” I said. “We have a lot to do.”

  Note from the Author

  Ok then! Book 1 has ended and poor Lena is in a spot of bother. Her best friend has been turned into a vampire, Sephtis is still out there with some kind of nefarious plan for her and you can be sure that the Hunters led by Jo and Marie will be after her.

  All in all, not quite what she was expecting. Moving forward, she will be learning to deal with her powers, her friend’s affections and early-onset vampirism and the enemies she’s acquired. All while ensure that she protects people, supernatural and human alike, from the Hunters. Quite a challenge but one that I hope you would enjoy sharing with her.

  R. J. Murray

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