by Kait Nolan
~*~
“And do you remember the name of the guy in Albuquerque?” asked the wraith.
Emily bit her lip, as if frantically wracking her brain for the name.
“Oh he’s quite famous. Maybe you’ve heard of Ryan Gosling?” She whipped her hands around, looping the rope around the wraith’s neck and yanking to cut off his air supply. His hands, predictably, came up to the rope, exactly as she’d wanted. Bringing her bound legs up, she kicked against his chest as hard as she could, sending him stumbling and the chair skidding, then toppling backward toward the edge of the circle of light. Emily fell and rolled with considerably less panache than she’d been taught, but she made it out of the chair and into the waiting embrace of dark.
It wasn’t enough. Though she could see the wisps of shadow wrapping around her like mist, it wasn’t sufficient to allow her legs to phase out of the ropes as her hands had done. Wriggling like a fish on a wire, using her arms to pull, Emily made for the nearest patch of true shadow. Behind her, she could hear the pounding of feet and the slither of the Sugea across the concrete floor.
Slither? Crap!
It was instinct to roll to the left, just as the Sugea struck. He hissed in fury as his blunt nose slammed into a crate. His fully shifted snake body whipped and twisted, snagging Emily around her feet. She screamed as she was plucked from the ground. Air exploded from her lungs as he slammed her against a girder. The Sugea’s tail whipped her back toward the wraith. Emily reached out blindly grasping at whatever she could find. Her fingers skittered over hard, rough surfaces before latching on to the sharp edge of some kind of warehouse machinery. She curled her hands as tight as she could. When the Sugea yanked, her arms all but came out of their sockets. But his tail slipped off her feet.
Relief surged through her, then fled as her bloody hands slid off the cherry picker’s arm.
No!
She tumbled down, down, and crashed into the shadow of its base. Pain rocketed through her side, making it hard to breathe. Lights flashed behind her eyes. Clumsily she rolled, crawling between the tires of the cherry picker and into the true shadow.
Her abductors were circling the palettes of crates, searching for her.
Squinting against the pain, she concentrated on wrapping the shadow around her, biting back nausea and phasing her body but not the rope out of the normal dimension of space. The rope fell through her ankles. Emily blinked again, dumbfounded. It was one thing to suspect that the shadows were working in her favor. It was another thing entirely to see it first hand.
There was no time to consider the ramifications. She had to get out of here. Dragging herself out from beneath the cherry picker, Emily began to run, keeping her eyes on the criss-cross of shadows on the warehouse floor. She needed a plan, fast. Without knowing the layout or her exact location, she couldn’t just shadow walk back to school. So she had to find another way out.
“There!” The wraith’s shout came from behind her.
Emily switched directions, zagging onto a new row of boxes and trying desperately to run into the shadows. The wraith was gaining, his footfalls growing closer with every step. Ahead the Sugea slithered into view, blocking her exit. She changed directions, using her momentum for three steps up the side of a stack of packing crates.
If I can just get up and over—
Her foot slipped. As she felt herself begin to fall again, she thought, This is it.
But she didn’t hit the concrete, didn’t hit the crates. She hit the shadow bridge.
“What the hell!” shouted the wraith.
Emily rolled into a crouch, hoping to make herself smaller, keep from being seen as she began to edge her way along the bridge, back toward where she’d come from. The band of black narrowed as it passed the confused wraith. With a prayer and a leap of faith, Emily followed it—and felt her body bend and flatten as the shadows did.
The wraith kept going toward his partner. Emily took advantage, sprinting along the bridge and all its twists and turns until she reached the door of the warehouse. This would be the tricky part. She’d have to phase back in to press the bar and open it. Phasing herself through a door would be well beyond whatever rudimentary powers she apparently possessed. If she couldn’t fade back to shadow after, she’d be lost.
Taking a deep breath, she reached for the door.
The bar was cool to the touch. With a furtive glance over her shoulder, she pressed it slowly, carefully, hoping the kidnappers’ steps would mask the snick of it opening. As soon as the gap was wide enough, she slipped through it, turning to grab the knob on the other side to slow its closing. But there was no knob and the door crashed shut.
Scrambling down the broken steps, she pelted across the parking lot for the gates. They were chained shut, but there was enough space between them that she could slide through. Then she ran for all she was worth for the treeline and the forest dark. Behind her, the door slammed open, cracking against the corrugated metal walls. Breath heaving, pain stabbing her chest with every inhalation, she stumbled beneath the branches and tumbled, aching, into the nearest pool of shadow.