Shadow Dancer Boxed Set

by Courtney Rene

  "Stop it," I said and turned my head away from his.

  His eyes slit almost shut at my rebuke. His mouth hardened in lines of anger. He grabbed my arms hard and painfully and shook me once, with enough force to smack my head back against the door behind me. "No," he said through gritted teeth. "No," he said again.

  I needed to see what I was dealing with, so I phased us into the shadows.

  "I'm touching you," he snarled. "So, I can see you, remember?"

  "I didn't forget," I said as calmly as I could. "But I needed to see you. The real you."

  His aura, once a clear clean blue, had changed to a murky gray blue. I looked him in the eye and said, "And I do. I can see you, Leif."

  His eyes widened as he realized what I had done. What I saw. He shook me again, harder than before. "I don't care what you see," he said. "I found you and you are coming with me back to Acadia. We are moving forward with the plans to take over the kingdom."

  I struggled in his arms, trying to fight off his hard grip. He laughed at me though and said, "You can't fight me. I trained you. I know all your tricks."

  I titled my head and said, "Do you?" Then I kneed him right in the crotch. He immediately let go of my arms, dropped to his knees, and grabbed himself. I leaned down right in front of his red face and said, "I've learned some new tricks."

  I pictured the forest in Acadia in my mind and reached for the shadows. I looked into Leif's ice-cold eyes and shivered, then phased into the shadows, letting them take me away.

  I didn't land where I thought I would. I knew something was wrong immediately as the air that touched my skin wasn't warm and soft. It was biting cold.

  I looked around only to see nothing but ice and snow and darkness. A big white moon lit up the world around me, tinting everything a soft blue. A blistering wind whipped my hair around my face. My breath puffed out of my mouth in clouds of white.

  I knew I was in the Ice Realm. "How the…"

  My last thought before phasing wasn't of Acadia. It was of ice. That's how I had ended up in the Ice Realm. I shook my head at myself. I needed to be more careful. Who knew where I could end up if I wasn't?

  I didn't see anything around but snow and ice. I walked a little ways just to have a look around. I didn't plan on staying long. My cut off shorts and pink tank top where not weather appropriate. I was freezing.

  "Hello?" I shouted. My voice didn't travel far. It was as if the cold sucked the sound up.

  There was nothing there. No trees, no bushes, no houses, or anything. Wait, maybe there was. I squinted in the dim light and saw rocks. Big ones. They were covered in a layer of ice and snow.

  I shivered and decided to head out of the Ice Realm. There was nothing there to see. As I made one more glance around, I noticed it was starting to snow. Big fluffy white snowflakes drifted down from the sky. I lifted a hand and caught one of the flakes in my palm. It melted quickly from the heat of my skin. I reached for another one. When it landed in my hand, it felt heavier and didn't melt right away.

  I peered down at it and realized it was not a snowflake. It was a little blue creature with wings. It was very feminine in form, thin and lithe and curved at the waist. It had long light blue hair that reached all the way to its little feet. The eyes were a bit disconcerting as they were black. I mean all black. No iris or white at all, just full black eyes that stared at me without blinking. It stood in my hand and regarded me silently.

  A tickling at my shoulder had me glancing over to see another one identical to the one in my hand land on my shoulder. Another dropped into my hair, hanging on to the tresses like Tarzan in the forest. More and more fell to land on me. Everywhere. On my arms and shirt, head and shoulders, even two or three on my feet or clinging to my ankles.

  They were like little bugs and the more that landed, the more disconcerted and worried I became.

  "Hello?" I said to the little fairy that still stood silent in my hand.

  It smiled at me, a big wolfish smile that showed little white gleaming teeth. Sharp, gleaming teeth, I noticed. It stepped daintily from the center of my palm over to grasp my thumb. I thought as a way to hold on. I was wrong.

  The smile changed from wolfish to evil in the span of a heartbeat. Then fast, and without provocation, it clamped those little sharp daggers into the flesh of my thumb.

  "Ow!" I shrieked, and flung if off my hand and across the air. It didn't go far though. It quickly found its balance in the air, fluttered it wings and headed right back at me. I stepped backward, not sure what to do. Before I could decide, I was besieged with sharp points of fierce pain all over as the fairies attacked.

  Shrieking again, I sloughed a hand down my arm to toss the little buggers off. I shook my head frantically to dislodge the fairies from my hair and neck. I was blinded by my efforts as my hair wound around my face. I wasn't making any headway with the creatures though. I would just get one off and it would fly right back at me and attack once more.

  I growled in absolute rage and pain. I'd teach them. I reached into the air and pulled a chunk of energy into me. Then sent it back out into the realm in a pulse of white light that left my body in every direction and from every pour. The little blue devils stiffened in shock as the current zipped through their bodies. They dropped like little bugs to the ground where they lay unmoving.

  Not about to give them time to regroup, I quickly grabbed the shadows from around me, pulled then with a firm picture in my head, and phased to Acadia where I landed in an undignified heap in the great room of the castle.

  Even though my head pounded with the beginnings of a headache, I staggered to my feet, before a room full of surprised faces. I saw that oozy red-bleeding wounds covered me from head to toe. From the aching sting I could tell that even my ears had not been left alone. I swiped a hand over my face to find that my little show of power with fairies had not left me unscathed either, as my nose was bleeding.

  "The Ice Realm," I said dizzily, "is a horrible place." Then I fainted dead away.

  ~ * ~

  It was the damp cool cloth on my face that brought me awake. I opened my eyes to see Gabriel's worried face as he leaned over me. I gave him a weak smile and said, "Hi."

  I was in the white room. It was a room that had once been my mother's. I had claimed it as my own though. Gabriel didn't seem to mind.

  "Hmph. That's all you have to say?" he growled.

  Taking stock of my aching head and stinging wounds, I replied, "Yeah. At the moment, that's all I got."

  "You want to tell me what happened?"

  "Ugh," I said and closed my eyes. "Which part? The biting fairies or being attacked in my room at home?"

  "What!" he roared.

  I grabbed my head in a hard squeeze and said, "Geez, Gabriel. Can you tone it down just a bit? I think my head's about to fall off as it is."

  "Who attacked you?"

  I threw an arm over my eyes and said, "Fairies. Little blue ones."

  I heard him take a deep breath and slowly let it out. "Okay. Start at the beginning."

  So I told him about Leif and then about the Ice Realm and finally the fairies. He didn't interrupt me during the telling at all. He sat stone faced and listened.

  After I was finished, all he did was nod his head once at me and then said, "You did good." He stood up, patted me on the head, and then left me where I lay on the bed in the white room.

  I stayed there for a little while. I wanted to allow my head time to settle a bit more. I had just sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed to get up when Lucas walked in.

  "What do you think you are doing?" he asked as he rushed over to the bed and pushed me back down on it.

  I sat back up again and said, "I have to get home, Lucas."

  "Oh, no you don't. You can stay for a bit longer."

  "No," I said and stood up. "I can't.

  He crossed his arms, widened his stance, and said, "Fine, but I'm coming with you then."

  "Why for?"

  "What
if Leif's still there?" Lucas asked.

  That surprised me. "How do you know about that?"

  "Everyone knows about that. We already had a meeting."

  "Hmph," I snorted. "That was fast."

  "So?" he said.

  I gained my feet and asked, "So what?"

  "So, I'm coming with you."

  "He's not going to still be there. I left. He's not going to waste his time sitting in my room waiting for me to come home."

  "How do you know?"

  "Cause I just know," I snapped. "I spent a lot of time with him."

  "I'm still coming."

  "Lucas, my head hurts too much to argue with you right now."

  "Then stop arguing."

  "Fine. Whatever," I said. That was just what I needed, a babysitter all of my own. However, although I wasn't about to admit it, and no matter what I had said, I actually agreed with him. I didn't know if Leif would be waiting to pounce on me the moment I returned or not. I could be wrong. The difference was, I was tired of worrying about it. Tired of waiting for danger to come for me. I was tired of being afraid all the time.

  If anything good could come from my day, it was that I had proved, if to no one but myself, that I could handle any situation that came at me. Whether it was Leif or blue nasty fairies, or whatever, I could deal with it. That was something.

  We quickly and quietly jumped from Acadia to Earth, directly into my room. We didn't say anything upon arrival. I didn't even say, "I told you Leif wouldn't be here," as it was extremely late, and I mean after midnight late, I quickly brushed my teeth and got into suitable pj's. I then grabbed a pillow and the afghan from my bed, and tossed them to Lucas.

  "You get the floor," I said and pointed to the space between my bed and the window.

  "Seriously? You're going to make me sleep on the floor?"

  "Yep."

  "But you have that huge bed."

  I shrugged, then jumped into my huge bed and said, "Yep. I do." I snuggled down under the covers and closed my eyes.

  I heard him huff out a breath and mumble to himself, but then he finally dropped down to the floor and after a bit of shuffling around down there, quieted.

  The house, my room, was suddenly very silent. All I heard was his and my own breathing. It was disconcerting. I rolled over and peeked off the side of my bed at him. His face was lit up a nice rosy hue from the light of the nightlight almost right next to his head. At least he didn't complain about the light, and I wasn't about to mention it either.

  "What?" he said, not even bothering to open his eyes.

  "Nothing," I said and quickly rolled back from the edge.

  "Night, Sunny," he said.

  "Night."

  Chapter Six

  "There has to be a better way," I said to Lucas the next day over breakfast. "You can't sleep on my floor forever."

  My mom and dad were at work already and I was supposed to be doing my summer school work. I had other things on my mind though and decided to feed us first.

  "What do you propose then?" he asked. He was a bit on the grumpy side. Apparently sleeping on the floor and in a cramped space hadn't been conducive to a good nights sleep. I felt a bit guilty about not sharing my bed, but I wasn't going there again. When I let him into my bed, it wasn't going to be to sleep.

  "There has to be a way to keep people from popping in," I said.

  "I know there is a way to keep people from leaving, but I don't know how to keep them out," he said. He shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth and chewed.

  I perked up hearing that. "How do you keep them from leaving?" I asked. I had never heard of that trick before.

  He shrugged and said, "You can only do it if you are in an enclosed space, but it's pretty easy actually. You just pull all the shadows in the room to yourself and hold them. I mean all of them. You can't leave a single shadow anywhere. That is so they can't use them to disappear."

  "Oh, I see. That's why the room has to be enclosed. It's the only way you would be able to get all the shadows," I said. "Is there a way to do the same thing to keep someone out?"

  "Not that I know of. I've never heard anything like it either. We could ask Gabriel or someone older like that. Maybe they would know."

  We finished breakfast, and as soon as we cleaned up, we jumped over to Acadia. At least with all the jumping and phasing back and forth, the trip was easier and easier every time. Neither one of us really felt the nausea or vertigo at all.

  We quickly found Gabriel in the great room. He stood in front of the window that looked out over his forest. "Don't you ever just sit down?" I asked as a way of greeting.

  "Too much to do," he replied, not even bothering to turn around.

  "Do you have a second?" I asked.

  "For what?" he replied.

  "I have a question," I said.

  "Just one?"

  "For now."

  He finally turned around to face me and said, "I doubt it, but go ahead. Ask your question."

  Since it didn't look like he was going to sit down anytime soon, I took the seat closest to where he stood and said, "Well, I was just wondering if there was a way to keep someone from phasing from Acadia, or anywhere for that matter, into my house or more importantly, my room."

  Gabriel stared at me for a moment then said slowly, "There is, but I don't know if we can manage it."

  "Why not?" Was he afraid I wasn't strong enough to do it? Whatever 'it' was.

  "There used to be a family that was able to use the shadows to form a protective barrier around an area. I haven't seen or heard from any in that family in many years. I don't even know if there are any of them left."

  "There are," Jack said. I hadn't seen him come in. He leaned up against the rim of the big table in the great room and said, "But..."

  There is always a 'but'. "But what?"

  "The Shadow Guardians are all in the employ of the king now. He ordered control of them almost immediately after he took the throne." Jack nodded his head slowly and continued, "He had good reason to be worried about someone popping in and killing him. There was plenty of talk about doing just that. As you know, not many of us were all that thrilled with the way he took the kingdom. There was talk from the very beginning that it was awfully convenient that King Malcolm died, and then right after his death, the queen and the babe vanished. It was believed for quite a while that King Gideon had killed the queen as well."

  "So, how do I get a Shadow Guardian?" I asked.

  Jack and Gabriel shared a look. Gabriel answered, "You don't. Unless…"

  "Unless?"

  "You could always go to him and ask him for the use of one?"

  "The King? Yeah, that'd go over well," I said.

  "From what you have said, he is a bit confused, but also protective of you. If you go to him and say you are afraid, maybe he would give you one."

  "You can't be serious," I said.

  "He does have a point," Lucas said.

  "No, he doesn't," I replied hotly. "I'm not just going to waltz up to the castle and say, 'Hey, Uncle Gideon, can I ask a favor?'"

  "Why not?" Gabriel asked. He had folded his arms over his chest and he regarded me with a tilted head look.

  'Because," I snapped.

  "You are the one that asked about the Guardians. Why are you getting so upset?"

  "You didn't see him the last time," I said. I clearly remembered the man as well as the evil that I had glimpsed inside of him

  "You should think about it, Sunny," Lucas said. "We haven't heard from the king in months, but every time you turn around, you are running into Leif. He seems to be more of an issue right now."

  "All right. I'll think about it. That's all I'm promising though. To think about it."

  I needed one of those guardian people. Was I just being paranoid though? Did I really need one? Did I need one enough to go to the king, the king that confused who I was with my mother? The king, that one moment was nice and friendly, and the next a complete whack job?

/>   "Was Gideon always a little…off?" I asked the room. "Or did it only come to light after he took the throne?"

  "He was young," Gabriel said, "and a bit spoiled. At first all of Acadia was just in shock and mourning. We didn't really pay all that much attention to him. But then he started taking the gifted people and forming the Shadow Guard. He raided the towns and the cities. It got bad fast. So fast we couldn't prepare for it."

  "By the time we began to see a problem," Jack said, "it was too late."

  I was trying to think of another way of finding a guardian when I had an idea. "Wait!" I shouted so loud that my voice echoed off the high ceiling. "What if I could just pop into the castle myself, grab one of these guardians, and then pop back out?"

  "That's kind of the point of them, Sunny." Lucas said. "It's their job. They don't allow people to just pop into the castle."

  "Oh. Right," I said. Duh. But I couldn't let go of the idea. It was a good one. I just needed to figure out how to make it work.

  "Think about talking to the king, Sunny," Jack said.

  "I'll think about it," I replied. I would. I just wanted to think of another way if at all possible. I didn't want to be beholden to the king for anything and I had a feeling any help he gave me would come with strings. Strings strong enough to strangle me if I allowed it.

  ~ * ~

  "Look, you can't be here right now," I said to Lucas after he phased into my room. "I have stuff to do and I don't need you here to complicate it."

  "Like what?" he asked.

  Like, none of his business. "Girl stuff," I replied evasively and turned my face down to look at the floor as if embarrassed. "It's private." Oh, I so was going to Hell. Lying was not one of my gifts.

  "Oh!" he said, as he turned a nice bright shade of red. "Um, I can come back. What time?"

  I had to think fast. How long would it take to phase over to the king's castle and kidnap a guardian? "Just give me about an hour or two. I just need some alone time, Lucas."

  "Sure, sure. I'll be back in a few hours," he said. Then he leaned in as if to kiss me, hesitated a moment, then stepped away, as another bright flood of color washed his cheeks red. "Um, right. Bye."