All Things in the Shadows II

by B. D. Messick

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now,” he says, looking at us. “Since you two seem to have taken the lead on this, you should be the ones to go to New York.”

  “We’re not investigators,” I say.

  “I know, but you know what happened and you’re familiar with all the players, both human and demon,” Father says.

  “I don’t know about this,” Sela says. “There has to be someone more experienced.”

  “Who would you suggest? If this has something to do with the Abyss, name someone more experienced,” Father says, staring at her.

  After a few seconds, she shakes her head.

  “Fine,” she finally relents.

  “Do you have an issue with this Jerol?”

  “No, sir. I think they’ve both proven themselves.”

  I feel a sense of pride surge through me and I look over at Kateri, and I can tell she feels the same.

  “Okay,” I say. “When do we leave?”

  “Tomorrow. Arrangements are being made.”

  After the meeting, my mother, Kateri and I are walking down the narrow hall toward our apartment.

  “Do you want to come in?” Kateri asks her as soon as we reach the door.

  “For a little bit,” she replies. “Eve needs to rest.”

  I reach out and take her hand.

  “I’m okay, Mom.”

  “Maybe, but I’m your mother and I’m telling you that you need to rest.”

  “Yes, Mom,” I say, grinning at her.

  Kateri presses her palm on the pad by the door and it slides open with a quiet hiss.

  We step inside and immediately my mother freezes in place as she looks around at all the drawings, sketches, and paintings that adorn the walls, most of which are of me. I smile at Kateri, taking her hand gently in mine. She looks nervous as she waits for some sort of response from my mother. For a few minutes, the room is eerily quiet as my mother stands there, still as a statue, only her head turning. A moment later, she turns slowly and looks at Kateri.

  “You did all these?” she asks.

  Kateri just nods and my mother steps up to her.

  “They’re amazing,” she says, taking her hands. “They’re so much better than anything I ever did.”

  “They’re okay,” Kateri replies, her head still down. “They’re nothing compared to your stuff.”

  “No,” she says, gently lifting her chin so she can look her in the eye. “They are so beautiful. I can see the love in each one.”

  Kateri smiles at her and then takes a step forward and wraps her arms around her. My mom looks at me over Kateri’s shoulder as tears fill my eyes.

  “Why haven’t I been in here before?” my mom asks as they move apart.

  “I don’t know,” Kateri says, before looking at me and grinning. “Why hasn’t she?”

  “I guess we’ve all been too busy,” I reply, shaking my head at her.

  “Well, I’m just glad I finally got invited in,” she says, winking at me.

  “Mom,” I whine.

  “Just kidding, honey.”

  She smiles at me, taking my hand and squeezing gently.

  “So, you knew all about this, a long time ago, right?” Kateri asks as we walk farther into the apartment.

  “What do you mean?”

  “About Shayds, the Factory and the rest of it.”

  E ~ What are you doing.

  K ~ What you should have done.

  E ~ I’m gonna kill you.

  K ~ Aw…that’s sweet. Love you too.

  “Yes,” she says, looking over at me.

  “You never said anything,” I say.

  “What would I have said?”

  I nod after thinking about it for a moment. It was just like me and the voices.

  “How did you meet Dad?” I ask, as I gesture toward our little living room.

  We all sit; my mom in the easy chair, and Kateri and I side-by-side on the couch, holding hands. She smiles at us.

  “I was jogging one night in the park, down at Indian Lake when something attacked me.”

  “A demon?”

  She nods.

  “I thought it was an animal, at first, but when I turned around, it was some sort of green-skinned creature with claws and horns coming out of its head.”

  “You could see it?” I ask.

  “Not right away, but after a few seconds, it sort of came into focus.”

  “It was probably emerging from the Umbra into the Solas,” Kateri explains, leaning forward and staring at my mother.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know that at the time.”

  “And then what?” I ask, feeling like I’m listening to a ghost story around a campfire.

  “And then your father showed up,” she says, and I can see the love in her eyes, and hear it in her voice, both of them tinged with sadness. “He just appeared out of the shadows, sword in hand and he jumped into the fray, like an avenging angel.”

  “You could see him, too?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What day was it?” Kateri asks.

  “It was the summer equinox, although I didn’t know it at the time.”

  Kateri nods, leaning forward a little more, waiting for the next part of the story.

  “He killed the demon?” I ask.

  “After a vicious fight. I even tried to help. That’s how I got this,” she says, touching the long since healed scar on her chin.

  “You said you got that in a car accident.”

  “What was I supposed to tell you?”

  I chuckle and mom smiles at me.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Anyway, after the fight, your dad had a pretty nasty wound on his upper arm. It didn’t need stitches, but it did need to be bandaged up, so I invited him home.”

  “You what?” I ask, grinning at her.

  “You would have too. He was so handsome,” she says before pausing for a moment. “Well, maybe not you.”

  After a second or two, we all burst out laughing and Kateri squeezes my hand.

  “So, what happened after you got him home?” I ask, grinning wickedly at her.

  “Not that,” she says, smiling and shaking her head.

  “Behave,” Kateri says with a sly grin.

  “So, you fixed him up?”

  “Yeah, and the moment I looked into his eyes, it was game over,” she says.

  “I know what you mean,” I reply, looking over at Kateri.

  My mother smiles at us, and I swear that Kateri blushes.

  “So, how long did he stay?” I ask.

  “All night. We talked until dawn, and he slowly disappeared…he faded back into the Umbra.”

  I feel a stabbing in my heart as I think about her having to watch him slowly disappear, like losing someone to cancer or some other terrible disease that gradually rips them away from you. She lowers her head and I can almost feel her pain as a heavy silence falls over the room. After a few seconds, I finally speak up.

  “What was he like? Tell me about him.”

  “Um…I can step out, if you two want to talk,” Kateri says, but I tighten my grip on her hand.

  “Why?” my mother asks, looking at her.

  “I just wanted to get Eve to ask you about him, but this is family stuff.”

  “You are family,” mom says.

  Kateri just nods without speaking as a few tears trickle down her cheek. I reach over and brush them away before turning back to my mom.

  “Well?” I ask.

  She sighs, and I can tell she’s recalling all the memories she has stored away for so long. It’s obvious that she wants to do him justice as she contemplates what to say to me.

  “He was everything,” she says quiet and sad. “He was kind, gentle, loving…but he was also fierce, strong and powerful.”

  “Like father like daughter,” Kateri says, smiling.

  “Where did he come from, before he was a Shayd?”

  “He was an Iraqi war veteran, a marine…he did f
our tours.”

  I sit for a moment, thinking about that, about what he must have been through and how brave he must have been.

  “When he got back, he said he wasn’t the same person. He couldn’t hold a job, lost his house, and then he just started drifting,” she says.

  Even though I didn’t know him, the knowledge that he was my father and he suffered makes my stomach sick.

  “He tried to get help, at least at first, but he couldn’t make appointments even when he could get one and then things got worse,” she says, and I feel a shiver deep down inside. “He started drinking and then he just ‘fell off the grid’ as he used to say. After about two years living on the streets, he met someone.”

  She pauses and both Kateri and I lean forward waiting for the next part of the story.

  “That’s when Craig found him.”

  “Father?” I ask, looking at Kateri.

  She looks as surprised as I am.

  “That’s how you knew him, I mean Father.”

  “Yeah,” mom replies, nodding and smiling at me. “Anyway, Craig brought him here. They worked hard to get him off the booze, which he actually kicked pretty easily after he had a purpose in his life again. He took to this life like you did, as if he was always meant for it. He was a warrior after all.”

  I smile, thinking about him getting better, finding some happiness and usefulness in his life again.

  “So, you really fell hard for him, huh?” Kateri asks.

  My mom looks at us and memories fuel her smile.

  “I did…I so did,” she says.

  I giggle but Kateri nudges me and frowns, so I stop immediately.

  “It must have been hard, knowing how you felt about him and not being able to see him, talk to him, or touch him for so long,” she says.

  “Well, we actually found a way around some of that,” she replies, with a grin.

  “What? How?”

  “I mean, you know Shayds can ‘touch’ humans in the Solas, but it doesn’t feel…right,” Mom says.

  “Yeah,” Kateri says.

  “When he would put his hand on me, it felt like a hunk of wood or something just setting there. There was no life, no feeling to it.”

  “Kateri told me about that,” I say.

  “So, we decided not to do that, since it gave us no joy, but we found a way around the ‘not talking’ part.”

  “Really?”

  She nods at us before reaching into her shirt to pull out a familiar-looking piece of folded up parchment. Even before she has her paper unfolded, I retrieve my own fragment from my pocket. She chuckles quietly.

  “I see you already know about this,” she says.

  “Kateri gave it to me when she first showed up in my room,” I say.

  “In your room?” mom asks, frowning at both of us.

  I look at Kateri and she just shakes her head.

  “Yeah, well…she just...” I stumble.

  And then a smile blooms on her face.

  “I’m just kidding,” she says, laughing and a moment later we join in.

  After a few seconds, the laughter dies down and I look at my mother.

  “I wanted to tell you,” I say. “That night when you called, and I said I was going to the park, I wanted to tell you.”

  “I know, but just like me, what would you have said?”

  “Yeah, but now that I know that you knew all about this, I could have told you.”

  She shakes her head before reaching out and taking my hand.

  “That’s my fault,” she says. “I should have known how strong you are, and that you could handle the truth about who you are.”

  “It’s okay,” I reply quietly. “I didn’t handle it that well at first as it turns out.”

  I look over at Kateri and smile, and she gives me a wink.

  “She did better than I did when I met my first Shayd. At least she didn’t punch me,” Kateri says to my mom.

  “But I did run away crying like a little baby,” I say, frowning at myself.

  Kateri takes my hand and squeezes it gently.

  “You did good, trust me,” she says, smiling at me.

  I smile back at her before turning to my mother again.

  “You were able to talk with Dad?”

  “Well, I could talk, and he could hear me, but I couldn’t hear him, of course, but that’s where the paper came in,” she says. “It was a weird combination of text messaging and a one-way phone call.”

  “At least it was something,” I reply.

  “True. It made the months between when we could see each other a little more tolerable.”

  I sit and think about that for a few seconds, about how hard it must have been for her, not being able to see the man she loved, and how lucky I am that I was able to see, touch and experience Kateri from the beginning. I look at my mother and suddenly I’m up and hugging her as tears roll down my cheeks.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that, and that you had to keep it a secret for all these years,” I whisper to her.

  She hugs me tight, laying her head on my shoulder.

  “That’s what parents do,” she says, and tears soak into her shirt.

  When I finally release her, I wipe the remaining tears away with the back of my hand and return to Kateri, leaning over and kissing her quickly, not concerned about my mother’s presence. Kateri gently strokes my cheek with her fingers and then looks up at my mother.

  “How long were you two together?” she asks.

  “Almost five years.”

  Kateri nods and smiles.

  “What did he say when you found out you were pregnant with Eve?”

  “He cried,” she says quietly. “He said it gave him the one thing he never had a chance to do in the human world; have a family.”

  My eyes fill with tears again as I think about him, and how much I lost never having had a chance to know him.

  “Did he ever have a chance to hold me?”

  “Yes, four times. He loved you Eve, with all his heart.”

  Chapter Nine

  It’s nearly midnight by the time we end our talk, and we’re all exhausted. I want to know more; I need to know more, but I can tell some of the memories are taking a toll on my mother, and we all need to rest.

  “You sure you don’t want to sleep here?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head politely and smiles at us.

  “No, that’s okay. You two need your space.”

  She moves to the door and then turns, pulling us both into a tight embrace, and kissing each of us on the cheek.

  “I love you both,” she says, stepping back and looking at us.

  “I love you, too,” Kateri blurts out.

  I look at her and she’s blushing a bright red and looks like she wants to crawl under a rock and die. My mother takes her hand and holds it gently.

  “That makes me happy,” she says.

  Kateri looks down at the floor, but eventually she lifts her head and looks at my mom.

  “Cool,” she says awkwardly, and then I decide to rescue her.

  “I love you too, Mom,” I say.

  “I know you do, baby. You two sleep well and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Night, mom,” I say as the door opens, and she slips out into the corridor.

  As soon as she’s gone, I turn and look at Kateri.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Thank you,” I say, reaching out and gently caressing her cheek.

  She smiles at me.

  “For what?”

  “For pushing me to talk about this.”

  She holds my hand against her face.

  “You need to know everything you can about him, Eve. He’s part of you…he helped make you who you are.”

  “I know,” I whisper. “I love you, baby.”

  “I love you too, Eve. So much.”

  Suddenly, she takes my hand and leads me over to our bed, pushing me down onto the comforter. As she stares into my eyes, I reach
up and tuck her hair behind her ear, allowing my fingers to linger along her cheek. She sighs quietly and then turns her head, placing feather like kisses on my hand.

  “We should probably get some sleep,” I say. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

  She nods before lowering her head and kissing me. Her lips press hard against mine and my hand slips down her side, along the smooth curve of her back. She lifts her head and smiles at me.

  “Well, that’s not going to help us get to sleep,” she says.

  “You started it.”

  “Oh yeah, so I did,” she replies, chuckling before lowering her head and kissing me again, slowly moving down my body, lifting my shirt and placing her lips on my skin.

  I arch my back and sigh as the touch of her lips sends shivers of excitement up and down my spine.

  “Sleep is overrated anyway,” I say, running my hands through her hair.

  I turn over and look at the little clock on the nightstand, 3:47. The last time I looked at it, it was 3:15 and the time before, 3:01. I sigh quietly and roll off the bed as carefully as I can. Kateri is lying on her side, the blankets pushed halfway off. Her right leg is exposed all the way up to her butt and a little grin comes to my face as I watch her, memories of how soft and smooth her skin is makes my heart beat just a little faster.

  I pick up a balled-up t-shirt off the floor and slip it on, forgoing the bra. A contrasting pair of wrinkled sleep pants is next, followed by the one pair of Nikes I took from the house. When I touch the pad by the door, it opens with a quiet hiss and I look back at Kateri, but she’s still slumbering. I slip out and head directly to the elevator. At this hour, there are very few people up and about. I touch the button for the top floor and the car begins to move. For the few seconds it takes to reach the upper level, I just stare at the doors, waiting impatiently for them to open.

  When they finally do, I step out into the corridor and immediately turn left and open the door that leads to the roof. A flight of fifteen stairs and I push open the door at the top, emerging into the crisp, early morning air. The Factory is actually a few stories taller than the Solas brick facade. The roof is flat and extends in all directions, ending at a short metal railing that encloses the entire space. Turning right, I walk to the edge and sit down on the smooth metal surface, dangling my legs over the side of the building and resting my chin on the railing.