Shadow Born

by Jamie Sedgwick

  Mr. Oglesby chuckled. “Glass jaw,” he said. “That’s what we used to call it. Means he takes a hit like a girl.”

  “Hmmm?” said Julia.

  Mr. Oglesby glanced up and saw two pairs of fiery feminine eyes boring holes through his skull. “Oh! Sorry! All apologies, just an old expression. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Sure,” said Julia. She turned to Gabriel. “We’re gonna have to fight our way out of here. Do you believe he really has fifty shadowfriends here?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “He’s a liar. I wouldn’t believe anything he said.”

  “That’s good to hear.” Julia surveyed the little group. “Still, we’ve got a bit of a problem. We’re almost certainly outnumbered, and the weapons we have will only work against shadowkind.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Gabriel said. He pulled the two crossed swords from the wall, and laid them on the floor. “Julia, I need a couple rounds from your pistol.”

  Julia drew her weapon and tossed Gabriel the whole magazine. He took two bullets out and used the pommel of one of the swords to crack the acrylic casings. Carefully, he dripped R9-11 out over the blades.

  “Good thinking,” said Julia. “A multi-purpose weapon.”

  “That’s the idea,” said Gabriel. “This should work against humans and shadowkind.”

  “Don’t get any of that on your skin,” said Mr. Oglesby. “R9-11 may be stabilized, but it can still have unexpected effects.”

  When he was done, Gabriel took one sword for himself and handed the second blade to Jodi. “We’ll take the swords since you two already have guns. How many EGGS do we have with us?”

  “Just two,” said Julia. “The rest are in the plane. Unfortunately, we need to use one of them in here.”

  “Down here?” said Jodi. “What for?”

  “We have to wipe the hard drives on these computers. The electromagnetic blast will fry the electronics. It’s the fastest way.”

  “You’re right!” said Mr. Oglesby, slapping his forehead. “These old boat anchors are totally unshielded. I had forgotten how delicate they were in those days.”

  “Then we just have one,” said Gabriel. “We shouldn’t use the last EGG until we’re outside. It’ll do maximum damage that way.”

  “Agreed,” said Julia. “Shall we go, then?”

  They piled into the elevator and set the timer on the first EGG. It exploded during their ascent, and the shockwave rattled the elevator.

  “Well they know we’re coming now, don’t they?” said Julia. “Everybody get ready.”

  Nothing could have prepared Gabriel for what came next.

  Chapter 28

  The group emerged from the elevator prepared for battle. Instead, they were met with absolute silence. The lodge looked exactly the same as they’d left it. Gabriel immediately sensed that something was off, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. It was something subtle, something he couldn’t quite track. It was a strange feeling, and it sent a chill crawling up his back.

  “I guess you were right about Victor being a liar,” Julia said. “There’s nobody here at all.”

  Her words hung in the air for a moment. Mr. Oglesby sniffed loudly. “It’s not right,” he said. “Something’s strange.”

  “I feel it too,” said Jodi. “It’s too quiet.”

  “Let’s get moving then,” said Julia. “There’s nothing else we can do here. We’ll have time to figure out our next move on the way back home.”

  They left the lodge and took the front stairs down to the path. Gabriel glanced around nervously, the sword hilt tight in his grip. He couldn’t get over the eerie, stifling silence. It was even worse outside.

  It was dark now. The forest was deep with shadows. The sky overhead was clear and bright, and the moon was just cresting over the mountains behind the lodge. Moonlight glinted off the patchy snow and frosted grass.

  “I’m getting seriously creeped out,” Jodi said. “It’s even quieter out here than it was inside.”

  Julia scanned the woods up ahead. “Get moving,” she said. “Flannigan, would you lead the way please?”

  “Of course.”

  Mr. Oglesby idled up to the front of the group and started walking. Julia and Jodi fell in behind, and Gabriel took up the rear.

  Gabriel felt better once they were moving, but he still couldn’t shake that ominous, dreadful feeling. He turned his glance aside, checking the trail behind them and the smooth grassy field to the sides. There was nothing, and he forced himself to move on lest he hold the party back.

  Gabriel took a few more steps and suddenly stopped. It was as if something had touched him, some sort of presence. But there was nothing close by. Nothing physical, anyway. Gabriel felt a dreadful chill crawl down his spine and he turned around. The land was still and quiet. His mind reeled with flashes of images: teeth, claws, blood… wings.

  Gabriel threw a glance skyward, over the mountaintops. The moon was halfway up now. It threw brilliant silver light across the snowy peaks. The stars above shone like jewels in the sky. And then, they vanished. Gabriel blinked. A huge section of the sky had turned black. He took a few steps back.

  “Julia!” he called over his shoulder.

  The others hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped, and they were several yards ahead. They turned and let out a chorus of gasps.

  The shadow moved down, passing in front of the moon and swooping down towards the plain. Gabriel saw now that it wasn’t one shadow, but hundreds -no, thousands. There were literally thousands of creatures swarming down out of the sky. Then the face of the mountain turned black as shadow creatures crested the peak and came roaring down the side.

  “Good lord!” Julia said. “RUN! TO THE PLANE, RUN!”

  They all moved in unison, breaking into a full run across the field. For a second, Gabriel dared to hope they might escape. Then, the shadow creatures caught up with them. Something flew past Gabriel, striking him on the back of his head as it passed, and knocked him to the ground. He tumbled expertly and rose to one knee with his sword at the ready. The creature was already gone, but he’d seen enough to recognize it from the Book of Shadows.

  It was called a Varsifur. The creature had a humanoid torso but lacked legs, having instead a long trailing tail. It was about three feet long with hairless, leathery skin, and bony, bat-like wings. Gabriel knew the creature’s fangs and talons contained a deadly poison. He frantically felt his head for scratches. Fortunately, he found none.

  An enormous wolf-like creature with glowing red eyes and thick matted fur leapt out of the darkness. It was a warg, one of the deadliest of shadowkind predators. Gabriel lowered his stance and swung his sword, slicing the beast through its midsection. It landed heavily on the path. The warg let out a wild howl as wisps of smoke rose from its skin. Its hair turned fiery red, the color of glowing embers. It crumbled then, as if it had been made from dust and nothing more.

  Gabriel heard another howl up ahead. He glanced up and realized that they were surrounded. Shadowcreatures closed in from every angle, a wall of drooling, slavering monsters, fangs and claws bared and thirsting for human blood.

  “Cover your eyes!” Julia shouted. She threw the last EGG down in the middle of the path, and buried her face in her arms. Gabriel had a split second to cover his face before the EGG let out a shriek and erupted.

  The night shook with the roars of shadow creatures as the electromagnet pulse ripped them out of existence. The noise lasted for several seconds, and then suddenly the night became eerily silent. Gabriel lowered his arm and glanced around the clearing. The shadow creatures were gone, but more of them were already funneling out of the surrounding woods and down from the mountains. Where were they all coming from?

  The group fled but the monsters were closing in fast. Then, up ahead, Gabriel saw several humans emerge from the woods along the path. There were five men and one woman in total. Six shadowfriends, all carrying weapons.

  The shadowfriends spread out, forming a circ
le around the group. Gabriel threw off his pack and lunged forward with his sword, provoking one of the larger men into a fight. They flew into action. The man was armed with a katana, and he used it expertly. The shadowfriend avoided Gabriel’s attack and countered with a lightning fast response. Gabriel’s instincts took over. He parried the attack, danced out of reach, and then countered. Their blades flashed in the moonlight. The sound of ringing steel filled the air.

  Gabriel’s opponent was well trained but he was older. That made him slower, and he was already tiring. Gabriel knew he could wear the man down if he had the time, but he wasn’t sure he’d get the chance. He heard a desperate cry behind him. He dared a glance over his shoulder just in time to see two men taking Julia down to the ground. She had her pistol in her hands, but she couldn’t get a shot off. It wouldn’t have helped anyway. She didn’t have any real bullets. They were only armed with R9-11.

  Mr. Oglesby struggled heroically against two more shadowfriends, using his cane like a sword. Jodi held her ground fighting the last two, but Gabriel could tell that her sword was getting heavy. It was hopeless. In a few more minutes, the shadowfriends would overwhelm them and it would be over.

  Then something strange happened. Something terrifying and wonderful all at once.

  Gabriel heard the howl of a wolf and he turned, fearing that another warg had joined the fight. Instead, he saw Mr. Oglesby, head tilted skyward, the chilling sound erupting from his chest. Mr. Oglesby’s attackers staggered back, stunned by the inhuman noise.

  Flannigan Oglesby began to change. Hair sprouted all over his body, and his bones began to crack and reshape into something less human… something wolfen. His face grew and stretched into a long canine snout and his ears lengthened, pointing up over the top of his head. His shirt ripped and he tore the cloth off with long, clawed fingers.

  In seconds, the transformation was complete. The old Englishman was gone, and in his place stood a creature not entirely wolf but not nearly human. Mr. Oglesby threw his head back and howled. Shadowfriends and shadowkind alike scattered.

  Chapter 29

  Everything seemed to stop during the incredible metamorphosis. Even the shadowkind halted in their tracks, mesmerized by the transition. Then, just when it seemed that there was nothing human left of old Mr. Oglesby, he turned his long snout towards Gabriel and in a gruff, wolfish voice shouted:

  “Run! Get Jodi out of here!”

  Gabriel didn’t hesitate. He dashed across the clearing, caught Jodi by the arm, and began dragging her with him. Jodi struggled against him. “What about Julia?” she cried out. “We can’t leave her!”

  “We can’t save her!” Gabriel shouted.

  Something must have clicked inside her mind, because Jodi quit fighting. She broke into a run so fast that Gabriel could just barely keep up with her. Suddenly they were tearing down the mountainside with shadowkind snapping at their heels. They ripped through the brush and leapt over fallen trees, barreling straight down the hillside. The monsters fell further behind, confused by the awkward terrain. By the time the children hit the beach they were alone. The shadow creatures were only seconds behind.

  “We’ve got to get in the air before they catch up!” Gabriel shouted.

  “No problem,” said Jodi.

  They clambered inside the Albatross, and she had the engines running before Gabriel could even get the hatch closed. The plane rolled down the beach and splashed into the water. Gabriel watched through the hatch window as Shadowkind raced out of the woods, pounded across the beach, and began floundering in the water. Jodi throttled it up.

  When she gunned the engines, the plane accelerated so fast that it threw Gabriel to the floor. He pulled himself back to his feet and staggered up to the cockpit. He stepped through the doorway just as Jodi pulled back on the yoke. The Albatross lurched skyward, and Gabriel hit the floor again.

  “Stop that!” he said. Jodi twisted in her seat and laughed.

  “Hey at least we lost them,” she said.

  As the Albatross made a slow ascent towards twelve thousand feet, Gabriel made several passes through the plane. He stopped at each window, gazing out at the wings and tail of the plane, peering into the darkness surrounding them. He couldn’t see anything out there but stars, and that at least was comforting. The varsifur and the other flying shadow creatures couldn’t keep up with the plane. Apparently, Victor hadn’t brought any more dragons with him.

  The children were in the air for almost twenty minutes when the reality of the situation finally settled on them. “I don’t even know where I’m going,” Jodi suddenly realized. “What are we going to do?”

  They were passing through some clouds and a light flurry of snow had begun to fall. Gabriel stared out the window, mesmerized by the swirling white flakes. “We can’t do anything right now, except go home,” he said. “If we went back there now, they’d be waiting for us.”

  “We can’t just leave Julia and Mr. Olgesby!” Jodi said. “Do you know what the shadowfriends will do to them?”

  “Yes, I do.” Gabriel didn’t like being reminded of the things that had happened to him. Jodi gave him an apologetic glance as she realized her mistake.

  “Sorry. I’m just so freaked out; I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “The first thing we’ve got to do is go home. We need to contact the other D.A.S. headquarters and try to get some help.”

  “Impossible,” Jodi said. “London and Canada are the only two D.A.S. operations we can contact, and they’re both destroyed. We’re on our own. But it might be possible to check on Julia… Gabriel, turn on that satellite radio, the one on the NAVCOM. Hit the red button. That one patches the signal into my headset…”

  Gabriel scrambled, trying to follow her instructions. “Okay, we’re good,” she said after a moment. “Hang on, I’ve got a signal. Pete! Are you there? Pete!” There was a long static-filled silence. “Pete, its Jodi. Can you read me?”

  “Hey, what’s up?” Pete’s voice finally crackled through the intercom. “You guys okay? The weather said a blizzard was moving in.”

  “It’s here,” Jodi said. “It’s snowing right now. Pete, we ran into some trouble.” She proceeded to tell him the entire story. Pete listened quietly and took a moment to digest it all after she finished.

  “Well, Gabriel’s right,” he said. “You two need to get back here ASAP. You should have plenty of fuel, just head for the BLM land behind the estate. You know that place I’m talking about?”

  “Affirmative,” said Jodi.

  “Good. You should be able to land in there without being seen. Just be careful. Check back with me in a couple hours. I’m gonna start trying to track Julia.”

  “Thanks,” said Jodi. “Gabriel, you can take the radio off the COM now.”

  They sat in silence for a long time, listening to the droning engines and watching the swirling snowflakes. Gabriel didn’t even know what to think. So much had happened that it was hard to get it all straight. First Reeves’ death, then Jodi’s betrayal. That was almost too much to comprehend, but now Julia and Mr. Oglesby were gone, captured by the Shadow.

  Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud, especially not to Jodi, but he just couldn’t think of any reasons why the Shadow would keep them alive. There wasn’t much point in trying to get information out of them. D.A.S. had already been removed from the picture. Gabriel wasn’t even sure there were any other operations. For all its grandeur and secrecy, D.A.S. didn’t seem to be very well organized or very powerful. It was just a small group of people doing their best to save the world. Or, it had been.

  “This is all my fault,” Jodi said. “I’m so sorry, Gabriel.”

  The sound of her voice shook him out of his thoughts. Jodi wasn’t crying, but she didn’t look far from it. The guilt was tearing her apart.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “There’s nothing you could have done. Remember what they did to me? How they broke my will and hypnotized m
e? They even killed Reeves. Sooner or later, they always seem to get what they want. There’s no way you could have stopped them.”

  “That might be true,” Jodi said, “but I was the weak link, you know? I was the one who gave in to them. If it weren’t for me, D.A.S. would still be around. So would Julia.”

  “You thought your mom was going to die,” said Gabriel. “Nobody’s going to hold that against you.”

  “I can’t believe they tricked me like that. I just want to kill someone. I want to hit that Victor guy right in the face. What a jerk… He’s the one that did that to you, isn’t he?”

  “What?”

  “He’s the one that made those scars on your back. With that whip of his.”

  Gabriel nodded. “He wasn’t the only one, but he did most of it. The Shadowlords have other ways of hurting you. In some ways, I actually preferred the whip. It wasn’t as scary.”

  “God I want to hit him,” said Jodi. “I feel so sorry for Julia and Mr. Oglesby. If he hurts them…”

  “Speaking of Mr. Oglesby,” said Gabriel. “I guess he’s a… a shape-changer or something like that?” It didn’t sound right saying that. There was no such thing as shape-changers or werewolves.

  “I guess so,” said Jodi.

  “So you’ve never seen him do that before? You didn’t know?”

  “Never. I always thought there was something creepy about that cane, though. The way that wolf head seems to stare at you, it’s like the eyes follow you when you move. It’s like its alive or something. Yuck.” She shivered visibly.

  “So you think the cane is the source of his power?”

  “I definitely think it has something to do with it. The thing is just so weird. I feel all tingly whenever I get close to it. The same kind of feeling you get when somebody’s watching you. It’s just creepy.”

  Chapter 30

  Gabriel stared through heavy lids at the half-eaten bagel on the table, uncertain as to whether he should finish it. It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry, because he was. It was just that he wanted to stay awake, and to stay clear-headed. A couple more bites and he might just fall asleep in his chair.