Shadow Heights

by E. N. Goeking

  “I cannot contain my desire for you any longer, my love,” his voice rich with sensuality. “I need to be inside you.” He teased at my lips with his tongue. A volcano was getting ready to erupt within me and I had to release it just as much as he did.

  He scooped me up from the floor and gently dropped me onto the mattress, and his masculine hands moved up my sides, squeezing me inch by inch. He pulled my shirt off over my head, exposing my black lace bra while I undid my jeans. His hands braced my back and his head moved to my chest, kissing the top of my cushiony breasts. His electricity started pulsing faster to match the beat of his heart and I could feel the acceleration entering me.

  His hands moved down my back as he gazed into my eyes and slipped them underneath my pants. Soon they were being tugged from my body, revealing my short pale legs. His hands felt like fire on my skin, leaving a burning trail up my body. He sat up and I watched as he stripped out of the rest of his clothes. I bit my lip as his naked form crawled on top of me. His tongue grazed my skin and I had to stop myself from shrieking in delight.

  He treated me like a delicate object, gently caressing my various parts and savoring every inch of me. I wrapped my legs around his waist while his hands slid up my thighs and made their way to my breasts. He exposed them, pulling back my bra with his hands. I moaned in delight as his mouth sent whirlwinds inside of me. The lights around us flickered in the background but he didn’t seem to notice while his focus was on me.

  His hands gripped the edge of my panties and soon they were being pulled off my body. I felt nervous as my nakedness came into full view but this began to fade as the energy surrounding us soothed any anxiety I was feeling.

  “Are you okay?” he asked quietly an inch from my face, his breath enticing me further. I nodded and pulled his face to mine, kissing him with eager lips. He rubbed his bare flesh against mine and it aroused me to a new level, feeling the firmness of him longing to be inside of me. “I need you.”

  “Mina,” he kept whispering as he thrust himself inside of me. He breathed heavily between each kiss and his mouth encircled my neck. The lights in the room began to flicker with each pulse and I held him to me tightly, clawing at his back. Soon our bodies were matching the rhythm of our mouths and every part of me was in ecstasy. The lights around us pulsed with great speed and exploded in a deafening blow. There was a commotion below the floor but it didn’t break the flow of our energy. Everything around us soon faded away. It was just me and him—our bodies, hearts, and souls becoming one.

  I tried to contain my moaning and praises toward him but I soon let go of all control, letting the sexual delight take me over. As Jaden reached his peak, a rippling of delightful spasms poured through me and his body quickened its pace, exploding like a flash of lightning that I could see through closed eyes. He screamed out in pleasure as my body writhed in satisfaction underneath him.

  “Oh my God,” he moaned. I reached up and ran my fingers across his chest as his rhythm slowed to a stop.

  While I expected him to collapse to my side in exhaustion, he suddenly clutched his hand to his chest and yelped with pain. My eyelids snapped open and I saw that his were glowing in the darkness with a faint blue light, an aquamarine aura encircling him. It was vibrating at a threatening speed, pulsing outside of his body into the room. I inched away from him as I felt his body temperature growing in heat on top of me.

  “What the fuck Jaden! What’s happening to you?” I cried out in panic.

  Like pressure exploding from a cannon, Jaden held back his pain with a stifled scream while the color of his skin turned from sky blue to crimson. The veins under his chest revealed themselves under his skin, pulsing with the flow of blood, trying to keep up with it.

  “I don't know!” He was uncomforted by my dramatics. He drilled his teeth into his fist, hoping to drown out the sound of his cries. Jaden jumped from the bed like a wild animal and crouched down to the floor in a corner, fossilized into a weakened form.

  “Do you want me to get someone?” I pulled the sheet over me and took a step onto the floor. His body was trembling and the disturbance in his voice grew with every step I took toward him. He begged for me to stay away in a voice strained from agony. “What should I do?”

  “Just get out of here!” I shook my head because there was no way I was leaving his side while he was suffering. “I don't want you to see me like this.”

  “No! I won’t leave you. Do you want me to drive you to a hospital?” I hurried over to grab my clothes which were near him on the floor and he inched farther away with his twitching body quivering from distress.

  “No hospitals. There isn’t any medicine in this world that can help me.” After slipping into my clothes in record time, I glanced at him a final time before abandoning him.

  “I’ll go get—” I started but he shortly interrupted.

  “Leave me!” I looked back a final time and his entire form seemed to be changing but into what I couldn’t even imagine. What had even brought this on?

  I left his bedroom, slamming the door behind me, and hurried out of the house without addressing his friends downstairs. I was frightened and too upset to form any words. I kept to the shadows while I walked back to my house and was lucky that I threw on a pair of flip-flops when I left the house. I never expected to be taking such a journey so late at night. There was no traffic anywhere but the mosquitoes were out in full fury and they were ravenous for my blood.

  I made it up to my room without my parents noticing my absence but I was surprised by their lack of attention. I never got away with anything.

  I lay in bed for hours thinking about what had just happened between us and the feelings that had passed through my body before his frantic episode spoiled everything. I knew Jaden was not inexperienced in the bedroom but he seemed to be as surprised as I was that this was transpiring—this was something he’d never felt before. In my heart, I knew he would be okay but that didn’t save me the barrage of fearful thoughts that kept popping into my mind in the meantime.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  When I finally fell into my world of dreams that infamous night, I was paid another visit by someone who had grown close to me but he appeared to me in another form. I followed a stone path that was leading me to the center of a bright and colorful meadow. I could see a child standing some distance away staring down at a pool of water. As I got closer, the child changed in size before my eyes and once I reached him, he had grown into a man. I felt myself covering my mouth, recognizing this person to be Jaden’s father. Joseph had indeed grown into an adult and I could see great sadness in his rather handsome face.

  Without speaking, he led me to a nearby bench where we sat together and stared ahead at the horizon of colors dusting the earth and sky. Even though his mouth never moved, I could hear his thoughts within my mind like a recorded message, playing over an old radio airwave.

  “This will be our final dream together for I shall soon be free. I must explain that your life here began before you even moved into Shadow Heights so you mustn’t blame yourself for what has happened. I had been trying to reach you for quite a while but your consciousness refused to allow me in until you were more open to the possibility. You were far from belief and your subconscious was barring all messages from the other side.” His lips quivered into a smile. “I appeared as my childhood self because you didn’t seem to understand the caution in these dreams. You were able to relate to the child more because you felt the safest; perhaps this is due to your own innocent nature.”

  “Why are you coming to me now?”

  “My son is about to do something very thoughtless and only you can stop him.”

  I flashed to the recent memory of him in the bedroom which his father picked up on right away. It kind of spooked me that he could read my thoughts but I suppose I should be used to it by now. “You see, it has already begun and I fear that you will not be able to prevent his future. He has already decided it for us all.”

&n
bsp; “How am I preventing his future?”

  “Your heart shall answer this for you at the proper time. You are this town’s only chance for survival and your decision could change the lives of many so do be careful in choosing. You must save my boy before he damns us all.”

  “How can I do that?”

  He smiled. “You haven’t begun to see how much you mean to him. He has demonstrated more love for you than anyone in his lifetime. He is willing to take such measures to protect you, even if he loses himself to gain that.” I felt warmth navigating on my hand and he looked into my eyes with profound intention. “I warned him of this when he was a child but he chooses to no longer listen. It is up to you. You are my last hope, Wilhelmina, but I know the heart is a stronger force than anything known to man. It will take much courage to refuse him. Only you can make this decision and whichever you choose was meant to be so do not fret. You must learn to trust yourself. Go to where the ground is sacred, you should know where to find it. You must go there upon awakening. Goodbye Miss Hunter and good luck.”

  I could feel myself being sucked back into my bedroom, like a tunnel surrounding my body and my eyelids snapped open like I had just had an out-of-body experience.

  I looked over and saw that it was 2:22 in the morning. I rubbed at my eyes and tried to remember all that he had said to me. As if something had taken control of my body, I rose from my bed and searched for a pair of shoes in my closet, instinctively knowing my journey would be on foot. Go to where the ground is sacred? How did I know where that was? I cracked open my door and peered out, surveying the hallway for any possible outside threat.

  I grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen before heading outside the house. I had the comfort of a small town to ease my fears of being attacked or kidnapped but walking alone in Shadow Heights at 2:30 in the morning under a full moon was far spookier than anything I could imagine. I stood at the street corner of my house, pondering which direction to wander, when the squawk of a crow came from a distance beyond what I could see. I knew it wasn’t customary to see birds out so late at night so following a hunch, I decided to follow it.

  Every time I ventured a few extra feet, it hopped further onto another tree but its eyes were always upon me, guiding me. I could see by now that it was leading me to Laenzar Woods. Of course, I only needed to remember my dreams. I thanked the bird privately in my head and stepped inside, taking a few deep breaths. He better be in here. I kept my flashlight on to ward off any visitors, signaling that I came in peace. The last thing I needed was for a bat to fly in my hair because my reaction would be to scream and any attackers in the area would come running—free human grub.

  I felt déjà vu while I took those same steps. Even in the dark, my mind remembered and led me exactly where I needed to be. The spot of land that had been so different and memorable a few weeks earlier was now becoming very important to me. I could see the flickering light of flame a few hundred feet ahead, the smell of burning logs wafting into my nose. I could hear the low bellow of thunder growing in the distance, a formation of clouds filling in the dark night sky overhead but there wasn’t even a sense of rain in the air.

  When I got close enough to see someone’s shadow against the grass, I moved around a tall pine and saw Jaden standing there naked, his back to me. He appeared to be in some kind of trance. His body was dripping of blood from certain self-inflicted wounds and this insight made me queasy. Did he do that to himself? What’s wrong with him? Should I go over there? Is it safe? I was frightened to take another step, fearful of how he would react if he knew I was there.

  He lifted his hands toward the sky and after he chanted the same line a third time, a brilliant glowing light ascended from his body and his feet levitated from the ground. I quickly ducked down under a bush so he wouldn’t see me. Like a lightning bolt, a beam of energetic light struck down from the sky into his body, piercing him in half. He let out a gut-retching scream as blue light pulsed out from his hands. I screamed and covered my mouth, afraid that at any moment he might explode. His body began contorting in different ways, demonstrating how newly flexible he was, and his legs flailed in the air as if they were no longer made of bone.

  I couldn’t take another second.

  “Jaden!” I shouted and my voice broke his trance. He turned to look at me and his eyes were no longer blue but black voids swirling like a vortex. His body fell to the ground but he caught himself on impact, gracefully stepping onto the grass. He placed his hand on the dirt; stalking me like a like a lion and the swirling of his eyes hypnotized me. At this moment, inside, I knew it was too late. He had already completed whatever his father had warned me about but how did he expect me to prevent that. I barely had enough time.

  In a quick dash, he was at my side, lifting me into his arms while trying to calm any fears I had of him. His normal glimmer was now gone and there was barely a speck of visible light reflecting from his eyes. I felt that I had lost him and this was no longer him. Something had taken over his body and the man I loved was gone. He looked like a sadistic killer, stained red in blood with a curdling smile rising at his cheeks.

  “My love.” His stained fingers etched my cheek.

  “Can you set me down?” I no longer felt comfortable being in his arms.

  “Sure.” He let me down gently and I couldn’t wipe away the uncertainty of what was really going on inside of him.

  “What are you doing out here at three in the morning?” This was my best effort at getting an answer from him. He grinned, a uniform of relief present in his posture.

  “What I should have done many years ago,” he vented with resentment as the swirling of his eyes shifted and the pale blue of his iris reappeared. “My father was such a coward for being afraid. I’ve never felt more alive in my entire life. You finally gave me the confidence I needed to go through with it.”

  “I did?” I asked, he responded with a quick nod.

  While I surveyed his appearance, a line of differences stood out to me from the tone of his voice to the size of his biceps, all appearing somehow different in little ways. I circled around him as he enjoyed the attention.

  “Why are you covered in blood?”

  “It’s part of the ritual,” he revealed and licked the end of his index finger clean. “Blood is the very life-force of the body and to other beings, it is something they gravely desire. They prefer the blood to be high-voltage in a way, to have a very strong energy flow of a negative nature.” He chuckled after seeing the distressed wrinkles in my forehead.

  “What did you do Jaden?”

  “Following my destiny like all the other greats in my family.”

  “You said you would never agree to this.”

  “I did this for you. I no longer had a choice.”

  “You did this for me?” I choked out, feeling overcome by guilt.

  “He wanted you Mina and this was the only way I could save you. I couldn’t live with myself if I hadn’t.”

  “How do you know this saves me?” I argued, crossing my arms.

  “He promised.”

  “Who promised?”

  “The gentleman I was telling you about before. I realized soon after we met, that he was the only one after you and it was never my grandfather, it had been him all along.”

  “Then you lied to me again,” I scoffed, feeling peeved by his indiscretion.

  “I had to my love. It was the only way. If you knew the truth, you would’ve been in far worse danger. He tried to keep you in fear to get inside of your mind and that’s why it was so important that you remained unaware of my true reality. My grandfather's ghost was merely his puppet, a vehicle for him to interact with this world.” I closed my hands and tried to make sense of this but I was growing irritated. “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “I had a dream. I was supposed to come here and stop you from doing something foolish. Your father’s words.” He tilted his head, arching his eyebrows to fine points.

  “Typical,” he hu
ffed. “He still loves to interfere from the other side.”

  “Well the way he said it was enough to scare me. Jaden, what are you really involved with here? I thought you weren’t into magic like those in your family.”

  “Well this is far different from the magic you think of, tricks and illusions. This is an ancient form of—” Jaden started but a voice from the trees cleared his throat to stop him. Before he even appeared, Jaden was pulling me to his side in a protective way, shielding me from something I couldn’t yet see, and covering the front side of my body with fresh blood.

  “Ah, ah, my young steward; we mustn’t expose too much to one of the innocents.” A tall man dressed in a fine black suit and violet tie walked toward the fire, a snake engraved cane under his left hand. As he ventured closer and the light of the flames exposed him, I recalled who he was. The same man on the road who Jaden had insisted didn’t exist. “Yes, my child, that was me.” I gasped as he read my thoughts. How was that even possible?

  He was quite a handsome man with fine translucent skin that I could almost see through and long flowing black hair that was twice as long as Jaden's but in the same color tone—crow black. His features were almost unhumanlike but he was still quite breathtaking in appearance, like Jaden. The bridge of his nose was short, his nostrils just small slits into the skin. His dark eyes had only a speck of light inside of them, so haunting and enchanting.

  His appearance made me uneasy and he seemed to be able to read this as his lips palpitated to a smile with strangely white teeth etched to sharpened points. What are you?

  “You catch on rather quickly, my child, as I had suspected. Allow me to introduce myself—I am Andrelius,” he spoke in a deep eloquent voice without one interruption of breath. He gestured for me to come with his hand, his long fingernails looking like tiny daggers, but I was disgusted by him and allowed his hand to sit freely in the air.

  “You’re one of the most interesting humans I have come across in my many years.” He dropped his hand, not looking at all offended by my avoidance.