shadows of salem 01 - shadow born

by hamilton, rebecca

  “I-I’m sorry I left you,” he stammered, struggling to his feet. His dark, haunted eyes were full of shame, and he wouldn’t meet my gaze even as he slipped my coat on. The fabric strained against shoulders that, even not fully grown, were almost too wide.

  “Don’t be. I told you to leave, and I meant it. You would have only been in the way.” I winced at the way the words came out. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No, I deserve that.” Jason raked a hand through his black hair, turning his face away from me. “I deserve every mean thing you’ve got to say about me, so go ahead and let it loose. I fucked up. I treated my mom like shit, and my obsession with wanting to become a vampire led to this whole mess.”

  “Jason.” I clapped a hand on his shoulder, and he flinched. “Jason. Look at me,” I said, hardening my voice, and he slowly turned his gaze back to mine. “I could say all kinds of things to make you feel guilty, to make you think you’re the worst scum on this earth for what you put your mother through and for all the stupid choices you’ve made that led you here.”

  He flinched, but didn’t drop his gaze, and my estimation of him rose a little.

  “But,” I added, softening my voice now, “I’m not going to do that. I think this experience has been punishment enough, and I think you’ve learned your lesson. You’re just a good kid who made some bad decisions. You know what you need to do now, though, don’t you?”

  Jason nodded slowly. “I need to apologize to my mother. And do whatever I can to set things right between us.”

  “That’s right.” I squeezed his shoulder again. “Look, this isn’t going to be easy for you to hear, but you need me to say it, so I will.” I paused, took a breath. “Whatever relationship you had between you and your father…that’s never going to change. Whatever kind of man he was, he was your father, and there’s no shame in missing him. But he’s not here now, and your mother is. And so is your little brother, the only other piece left of your father aside from you.”

  “I know.” Tears streamed from Jason’s eyes now, and he swiped hastily at them. “It’s just…I know what mom says about him, but he was my father.”

  “Yes. But you need to cherish what you have left, and stop holding onto what’s already gone. That means you need to stop chasing after your father’s ghost, and start taking care of your family. You’re the man of the house now. They need you.”

  It was kind of healing giving that little speech, because it was just as much for him as it was for me. I knew how he felt about his father, because that’s how I felt about Tom. The horrible truth couldn’t erase years of conditioned emotions. But Jason and I both needed to let go of the ghosts of our pasts.

  A feeble groan echoed from somewhere, and Jason and I froze.

  “What the hell is that?” he whispered, terror in his voice.

  “Stay here,” I ordered. I grabbed my gun, then sidled out into the hall to see what was going on. Had Maddock missed one of the witches? But there was nothing to be seen. Just the empty corridor with its flickering candles and dusty portraits.

  The groan came again, and I cautiously moved up the hall, heading in its direction. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I realized it was coming from the hidden room where I’d defeated Father James. What the hell was going on? Was there a wraith in the room?

  I entered, bracing myself to see the specter of Father James. Yeah, it sounded ridiculous, but after everything I’d seen in my life—and especially tonight—I wasn’t about to discount the possibility.

  But instead, I saw the phoukas, lying on the ground. I’d thought it was dead, had completely forgotten about it, but it was twitching, clearly trying to get to its feet.

  As though the thing sensed my presence, it rolled to face me. Glassy eyes stared up at me, filled with a combination of hope and despair. My heart clenched as I realized it was hoping that I might kill it and put it out of its misery, and afraid that I would instead leave it here to suffer.

  “Bloody hell!” Maddock swore, and I jumped.

  Spinning around, I saw him standing just two feet to my right, behind me, his murderous glare latched onto the phoukas. Okay, so maybe the despair hadn’t been directed at me after all.

  Maddock growled. “I thought the damn thing was dead!”

  “I’m guessing you finished imprisoning the witches?” I asked dryly.

  “Damn right.” Maddock advanced on the thing, and it curled up into a ball, retreating against the wall. “But it seems that my work here is not yet done.”

  “Stop.” I put myself between Maddock’s bulk and the pathetic creature shivering on the floor. “I’m not going to let you hurt him.”

  “Hurt him?” Maddock bellowed. “I’m not going to hurt it; I’m going to kill it! It’s a fucking unseelie!”

  “So what?” I shouted back. “You just let a horde of vampires go free into the night, and you’re going to bitch at me because I’m willing to let this phoukas do the same? He’s been tortured and drained for who knows how long, and he deserves to taste freedom now that we’ve killed his captors.”

  “Yer insane,” Maddock said flatly.

  “Bite me.”

  Ignoring Maddock, I turned away, then crouched down next to the phoukas. He trembled as I reached out with my hand, but with nowhere to go, the creature was forced to endure my touch. I placed my palm on its smooth, almost glass-like skin, then focused on tethering that rope. The phoukas’s eyes widened as I forged the connection, and he began to glow faintly as I transferred power into him. Not nearly as much as I put into Maddock, but enough to breathe energy back into him.

  Before my eyes, I watched the emaciated, beaten creature swell, its skin and muscle returning to its previous shape and luster. Long black hair, previously matted, turned into nearly downy-soft strands as he stood.

  “Filthy vermin,” Maddock grumbled from behind me, but I ignored him as I got to my feet as well.

  “I feel…strong.” The phoukas looked down at its hands in wonder, as if it couldn’t believe they were real. “Stronger than I’ve felt in…I cannot even remember. I cannot even recall what I was like before I came here.”

  “How long have they held you?” I asked carefully. My heart swelled with a combination of happiness and sympathy for him. Perhaps unwise, since he was unseelie, but what could I do? I felt how I felt.

  “I don’t know.” The phoukas’s voice was hollow as he lifted his gaze to mine. “A century, perhaps? Maybe longer. But I am free now.” He bowed, his long hair swinging forward with the motion. “I am in your debt, Brooke Chandler. If you ever have need of me, call my name, and I will come and grant you any single favor that is within my power to do so.” His voice whispered in my head then, and somehow I knew he was telling me his name.

  “Be well,” he said, and then he launched himself past Maddock and out of the room.

  I faced Maddock and arched an eyebrow at the look of utter disbelief on his face. “What are you looking at?”

  “Ye just earned a favor from an unseelie.” The shock in his voice told me this was an extremely rare event. “A no strings attached favor.”

  “Well, I guess that’s what you get for doing good deeds,” I said casually, not really interested in making a thing out of it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with this favor, and with everything that happened, I was desperate to put it out of my mind. I stepped past him, and my heart dropped into my shoes as my gaze latched onto Tom’s body. The pool of blood that had spread beneath him was already starting to dry, and his fingers were curled stiffly at his sides, already well into rigor mortis.

  “Stop.” Maddock gently grabbed my arm as I moved toward Tom. “Ye dinnae want to see him like this.”

  I hesitated. Part of me thought that it would give me closure, to turn Tom’s body over and see his dead face for myself. But after what he’d done to me, after the utter betrayal I’d suffered at his hands, I could hardly stand to look at him, never mind touch him. I didn’t want the real Tom
. I wanted my memory of him—of what we’d had. Seeing him would be too confusing for my emotions.

  My hands dropped to my sides, and I sighed. “What are we going to do with him? We can’t bring his body into the morgue. As far as everyone’s concerned, he’s already dead.”

  “Nothing.” I swung my narrowed gaze toward Maddock, and he shrugged. “Nobody knows about this place. It’s unlikely any human will ever stumble upon it. We can leave him here to rot. ‘Twas what he was going to do with ye.”

  “I guess you’re right.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and ignored the little voice in my head that said Tom deserved a grave, regardless of what had gone down between us. That voice was full of guilt for something that wasn’t my fault, and I wasn’t going to listen to it. I’d wasted enough of my time already, trying to avenge a man who’d been serving my enemy this entire time. I wasn’t going to waste any more.

  “How did ye know that ye’d be able to kill Father James by siphoning his magic?” Maddock asked, drawing my attention away from my very dead ex-fiancé.

  “I didn’t,” I admitted. “I just figured I could. I seem to be both an endless battery and an endless charger. Between that and the vision you showed me back at your cabin, it stood to reason that my ability to siphon magic might be stronger than that of a full-blooded witch, or a warlock like Father James.”

  “It is,” Maddock confirmed. “That’s why Father James wanted ye. I didna know ye were shadow born,” Maddock added, as if he could read the thought right from my face. Perhaps living for centuries and having every recollection of it had that effect on people. Or maybe that was just the kind of person Maddock was. “I didna even know for certain if shadows were real. I thought they were a myth, or at best, a reality long extinct. But it may explain how ye can siphon power and reincarnate so quickly.”

  “Maybe those things are best left to people who don’t know how to use it,” I muttered, thinking of Father James’ plan to take my ability for himself.

  “If Father James had succeeded, nothing would have stopped him,” Maddock said. “He would have had unfettered access to fae power, and could have used that power to do much more than simply annihilate the vampires. But,” he added, leveling his gaze at me, “yer nothing like him.”

  “In more ways than one,” I said, sliding my gaze back to Maddock. “But I don’t see the point in all that trouble now that it’s said and done. Wouldn’t he have burned up with all that power, too?”

  “The older ye are, the more magic yer able to tolerate at a single time,” Maddock said. “As a centuries-old warlock, Father James’s threshold would have been considerably higher than yers.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean one day I’ll be able to siphon off the amount of magic I did today without combusting into flames?”

  “Aye,” Maddock said. “And that, Detective, is exactly why yer so dangerous.”

  EPILOGUE

  “It’s been a week now, and he still hasn’t shown up.”

  I turned my head to look at Detective Baxter, who was leaning back in the driver’s seat of his car. We were parked outside a possible suspect’s door, once again doing reconnaissance work, but Guy clearly wasn’t into it. Dark circles marred the skin beneath his eyes, and the expression in them was glassy and filled with worry.

  “I’m sorry, Baxter,” I said, and I really was. Father James might have been an evil bastard, but Detective Baxter only knew him as his brother, and he had every right to be worried about him. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “You’ve helped plenty,” Baxter said tiredly.

  We’d put out BOLOs, questioned his congregation and staff, searched his apartment, retraced his steps in every way possible—well, except for the one way that would have led to the truth. Because the truth was that Father James had been erased from the earth, had disintegrated completely. All that was left of him was the power that still hummed in my veins, waiting to be used again.

  “I need to be doing more,” Baxter said. “I need to be out there, looking for him.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t just take off?” I asked, not for the first time. “You know, sometimes holy men have crises of faith. Maybe he needed time to re-evaluate himself, to examine his beliefs—”

  “James wouldn’t do that.” Baxter’s voice was quiet, but firm. “He was rock solid about his beliefs, and even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t just up and leave without telling me.” Anger seeped into his voice now. “He wouldn’t.”

  The rest of the day passed like this, tension and resentment and anxiety bleeding off Baxter until I thought I would be sick with guilt. And not just because I felt guilty about killing off Father James, even if it had been the right thing to do. I’d been having intense nightmares the past couple of nights—nightmares that showed a thick darkness rolling over Salem. In several of them, Baxter was pointing a gun at my face and glaring at me with abject hatred.

  When the day was over, I slammed into my Jeep, then pulled out my phone and called Maddock.

  “What is it?” He answered on the first ring, and the butterflies in my stomach—which hadn’t made an appearance since I’d last spoken to him—broke into a happy dance at the concern in his voice. Then again, that wasn’t really surprising; we hadn’t spoken in a week.

  “Meet me at the mansion,” I told him. “There’s something we need to do.”

  I hung up the phone, then drove out there. Part of me was dreading the idea of going back to the Onyx Order’s base—there were so many terrible memories within it, and I wasn’t talking about my own. I’d caught glimpses of all kinds of horrific things when Maddock and I had cleared the place. But I needed to do something about Detective Baxter before I went insane with anxiety, and this was the best way to go about it.

  “Are ye really going to refuse to let me teleport ye anywhere ever again?” Maddock demanded after I’d parked my car in the same lot as last time and hopped out of the vehicle.

  “No,” I admitted. “I just needed the drive to clear my head.”

  “Good. Then let’s do it right now.”

  He wrapped his arms around my waist, and the next thing I knew, we were standing in the main hall inside the mansion. Nausea tickled the back of my throat, but it was much less severe than it had been the last time, and I wondered if the extra power residing in my body had anything to do with it.

  “Now tell me what we’re doing here.”

  I took a deep breath, then squared my shoulders and looked Maddock directly in the eye. “Detective Baxter is on a mission to find his brother. If we don’t give him some kind of closure soon, he might very well end up coming here.”

  Maddock raised his eyebrows. “Here? To a place he won’t be able to even see?”

  “Here, to this general area that’s just a bit too close to where things happened,” I said quietly. “Here to where there might be traces of me in the surrounding areas as well as Father James. I know how you feel about law enforcement getting involved in the supernatural.”

  “Aye, ye do,” Maddock murmured, looking me up and down.

  I scowled at him. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “And just what do ye expect me to do, Detective?” Maddock asked. “We can’t very well produce Father James’s body. There is no trace of him in the mansion. Something which I believe was your doing,” he added dryly.

  I huffed. “I know that. But I was thinking that, since you’re ancient and powerful and all, you might have something in your arsenal that could alter a body.”

  “And whose body do you plan on altering, exactly?” he asked softly.

  I sucked in a deep breath. Stared Maddock straight in the eyes. Said the name that I’d hoped I would never have to speak again.

  “Tom’s.”

  Maddock threw back his head and laughed. The rich sound echoed in the empty space, filling me with a warmth that was entirely inappropriate for the situation. But I was thankful for the way it melted away the hurt that came
with thinking about my ex-fiancé.

  “Just when I think I have ye figured out, ye surprise me, Detective.” Maddock’s brilliant green eyes glimmered with humor, and possibly even a little admiration. “It’s not going to be easy, but it’s a good plan.”

  He wasn’t kidding when he said it wasn’t going to be easy. I gagged at the stench of rotting flesh as we entered the hidden chamber behind the painting where Maddock had left Tom. He was still face-down in the now dried puddle of blood, right where we left him. Maggots crawled over decaying flesh, the majority of his skin having deteriorated where the wriggly white worms devoured him.

  “Ugh.” I pressed my sleeve over my nose and mouth, resisting the urge to hurl. “I’m already starting to regret this.”

  “Too late now.” Maddock’s face twisted in an expression of disgust, but evidently he was made of stronger stuff than I, because he approached the body without the slightest bit of hesitation.

  Crouching on the bare wooden floor, he allowed his hands to hover over the body. An orange glow emanated from them as he muttered strange words under his breath, and I watched as the maggots disintegrated.

  Nice trick.

  Maddock made a flicking motion with his wrists, and the body flipped over of its own accord. I flinched at the sight of Tom’s mostly rotted face, but forced myself to look as Maddock worked his magic, transforming it. Before long, the corpse I was looking at no longer resembled Tom Garrison in any way. His clothes were changed to a dirty and torn pastor’s robe, and what was left of his features and build were now Father James Baxter’s.

  “I’m guessing that if anyone runs a DNA test, they’re going to find out it wasn’t him?”

  “Aye, but dinnae worry. I’ll ensure it’s taken care of.” Maddock rose, eyeing the body with a mixture of satisfaction and revulsion. “We’re already done with the hard part. Now we just need to find a place to dump him—a place where we can be sure he’ll be found.”

  I let out a breath. “And then what?” I asked, turning to face him. “What do we do after that?”