He must’ve noticed my flushed face. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You did get rid of his shadow, so that’s a success in my books. Just...crank up your aura some more next time.”
Another bottle smashed on the ground beside us. “Speaking of next time...” Gregory didn’t have to finish. I knew what he meant. Now was next time. If I wanted to try.
I drew in a breath as I surveyed the crowd. I wanted to redeem myself so much that the desire burned away any remaining doubts. All that was left in me was fight.
I looked Gregory dead in the eyes. “I want to try again.”
His mouth turned up at one corner. “You got it.” He immediately straightened and barked instructions like a captain in the heat of battle. “Patrick, you go with Iris and get the two on the right. Kyra get the ones straight ahead. I’ll grab the three on the left. Get your prisms ready!”
None of the bar patrons noticed our battle talk. They were all too busy staring at the fight, joining in, or moving out of the way.
“Iris,” Patrick said, grabbing my arm and yanking me to the side. “You can do this. I’ll get this one. You take that one—just like you did outside. Which was awesome, by the way.”
Patrick smiled sincerely, but I didn’t have time to reply. He had already whipped his prism out of his hoodie and was darting to the nearest shadow. I turned to my own target. I didn’t need to watch Patrick to see if he was successful with his. Patrick had perfect aim and form.
Giddy energy surged through me, feeling like a cross between excitement and nervousness. I zeroed in on the other whirling silhouette riding on the back of the second drunk fighter and sprinted towards my shot at redemption. My bare hands tingled with anticipation.
That’s when I realized what was missing. My prism. I’d given my purse to Kyra outside, and my prism was tucked away inside the bag. But that was okay.
I was a light warrior.
I could do this.
I didn’t need a crutch.
I reached for the loathsome form still clinging to its hostage. Once my fingers touched the familiar damp, cold substance, instinct took over. A ferocious passion poured into my fingertips and I dug into the shadow. If the shadow had been human, my death grip would have drawn blood.
After only a few seconds, I managed to rip the black mass off the man like a gigantic leech being peeled away from someone’s back. The slimy and disgusting sensation spurred me on more than deterred me.
Holding on with all my might, I was no longer concerned with my surroundings and how I appeared. “You’re not going anywhere,” I snarled through gritted teeth. This was payback for ruining that attack earlier, which I was certain I would have finished if it hadn’t have been for these repulsive beings.
As I clutched at the nebulous, squirming figure, my light aura erupted like the igniting of a torch. Glowing warmth spread all over my skin and deep down to my core, both soothingly warm and destructively hot.
Then something changed. The shadow struggled faster in my hands as though it was suddenly desperate to break free. I focused on my blazing aura and imagined the aura as a fire that grew hotter and more intense as I stoked the flames with my wild emotions. The shadow writhed even more desperately.
Was I burning the thing to death?
I gasped, shocked but ecstatic. My aura was working! I squeezed harder, but the shadow’s terrified squirming was becoming too erratic and uncontrollable. My grip started slipping.
“Patrick!” I yelled.
He’d just finished off his shadow. As he turned to me, his eyes widened. Whatever he saw must have been awe-inspiring because a few seconds passed before he shut his jaw again. He raced over to me, prism in hand.
Just as I was about to lose my hold on the shadow completely, I screamed in both desperation and anger.
Patrick slashed his prism sideways with perfect precision. The pointed edge whizzed past me, inches away from my stomach. The shadow evaporated and Patrick returned his prism to his hoodie pocket.
I bent over with my hands on my knees and took deep, labored breaths. Sweat streamed down my face. My undershirt clung to my stomach and back.
“What on earth was that?” Patrick’s tone was that of a child who’d just seen his favorite comic book hero come to life.
I grinned shyly as I looked up. I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer him since I had no idea myself. I didn’t know I was capable of holding a shadow that long, much less burn one with my aura. Of course, I hadn’t exactly succeeded, but I let myself enjoy the implied compliment in his shocked question.
That is until my skin began tingling and my hairs stood on end. My smile faded. I threw a quick glance behind me. Two lone, very well-defined shadows hovered in a secluded corner of the bar, watching me, or us. Once they saw me staring back they scampered off through the wall. None of that felt normal or right.
When I faced Patrick again, he was staring at the same spot where the shadows had vanished. And he was wearing the same nervous expression I was.
We didn’t have time to talk about it, though. The fight was over. Various people, including Gregory and the bartenders, had started cleaning up the damage. I didn’t see what had happened to the guys who started the fight, but considering the red and blue lights I could see through the dirty windows, I guessed they were probably handcuffed to the inside of a car.
Crap! Cops! After a bar brawl, cops showing up was generally a good thing. Unless you were underage. My eyes met Patrick’s.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ve got to go. These fake IDs can only help us so much.”
We found Kyra and rushed to the exit. On the way, I spotted Gregory who was sweeping glass off a table into a giant trash can. He looked at me and nodded discreetly.
Before we got to the door, Gregory’s eyes abruptly widened at the sight of something or someone behind me. A familiar voice simultaneously penetrated my ears.
“Iris? Is that you?”
I froze and grabbed Patrick’s arm for support. Jenny, my oldest sister. What was she doing here? I couldn’t just leave now. She’d seen me. I would have to give her some sort of explanation. I cringed and slowly twisted around to confront her wild eyes and gaping mouth.
“Iris! What in the hell...!” She stared incredulously at me and shook her head, but that slight motion made her stumble on her high heels. She almost spilled the drink that was in her hand. She was clearly trashed and wore a tight, barely-there dress that looked like it’d been stolen from a stripper.
I opened my mouth to speak but stopped myself. Coming up with lies on the spot wasn’t my forte. Besides that, her brazen drunkenness and wardrobe choice were distracting. I knew my sister was still hurting from her husband’s affair, but from what I could see, Austin was doing everything he could to make amends and change. I had hoped she would be able to forgive him and that they could move on. Instead, she was still living at our house but was out most of the time working. And apparently bar hopping.
“What are you doing here?”
“Don’t change the subject,” she snapped back at me. “What are you doing here?”
“I—um…” I tried to fabricate a story but didn’t get very far. Muffled whispers drifted out of nowhere to my ears and slithered around in my head. A shiver shot straight down my spine and I had to fight not to cringe and cover my ears. The hushed voices seemed to be coming from behind my sister, but nothing was behind her apart from her drunken fog and black, emotional shadow.
Patrick finally bailed me out. “We were looking for our friend. We heard some things at school and thought she might be here.”
I held my breath for her response but got nothing. Only a suspicious glare in Patrick’s direction. Jenny was a lot like our jaded mother, who was still getting over her ex-boyfriend lying to her about being married. My mom and Jenny were both leery of men, and that included my boyfriend.
Kyra had been standing aside eyeing the cops from the window. She walked over to me, put on her most genuine, concerned ex
pression, and flicked on her aura. Kyra touched Jenny’s arm as if she were oblivious to her drunken state. “Hi, Jenny. We were looking for our friend who’s gotten into some trouble lately. Luckily, we didn’t find her here, but we had to check. Sorry we alarmed you.”
She smiled convincingly enough, and Jenny seemed to lighten some. She was no longer trying to annihilate Patrick with her death stare. So that was a plus. However, her shadows remained.
“Fine,” Jenny said as she raked her glazed eyes over me once more, perhaps in an attempt to deduce whether or not I was drunk too.
Being wasted in trashy clothes would not be the best choice for any girl, but at least she was twenty-nine. I was seventeen. I had no legal right to be in a bar. I just hoped her foggy mind would keep her from realizing we’d entered with fake IDs.
We started to walk toward the side door, but Jenny grabbed my arm and yanked my head toward hers. My ear was an inch from her mouth. Jenny’s clenching grip made me wince, but I kept my mouth shut. Even through the stench of the bar, her breath reeked of alcohol. “Mention a word of this to Mom or Austin and you’ll regret it. Got it?”
My eyes burned, but I fought back my emotions and nodded. Once she released her grasp, she practically shoved me out the door onto the gravel that shifted under my unsteady feet. The heavy metal door slammed shut and the wind tore through my hair. But all I could hear was my heart throbbing. And all I could feel were the warm tears streaming down my cheeks.
Chapter 2
After Kyra had been dropped off, Gregory pulled up to the curb by my house to let out Patrick and me. Gregory rested his head on the headrest, and closed his eyes. He was familiar by now with Patrick’s habit of escorting me to my door and lingering a few minutes on my porch. The car’s engine purred into the quiet night, interrupted only by the occasional drone of his police scanner. Gregory received plenty of news from the spirit realm, but nothing beat the immediate news feed of a police scanner.
Once we reached the porch, Patrick took my hands. “You really did great tonight.” He delivered the line with such confidence and sincerity I almost believed him.
“Yeah. I guess.” I dropped my gaze and kicked the ground absentmindedly. “It’s just that...I feel like I’m not living up to Gregory’s standards for me. I’m certainly not living up to mine. I mean, I thought I was supposed to have more than one special talent. But so far, all we’ve uncovered is that I can stick my hands in a shadow and get myself drunk. Not exactly impressive.”
Patrick surprised me by laughing. “Okay, first of all, your standards are impossible.”
I smirked at him, so he pulled me close to look me in the eyes. “Relax. You may have more talents that just haven’t been revealed yet. Gregory seems to think so.”
I rolled my eyes. “Gregory seems to know so. I just wish he’d share the source of his knowledge so I could know too.”
“Yeah, but you’d still be impatient as you waited for the other gifts to show up.”
I punched his arm, but he continued as if my fist had been a fly. “And even if that was your only gift that would be amazing enough. I mean come on, using your bare hands against a shadow is pretty sweet. I’ve never known a light warrior with that ability. And I’ve met a lot of light warriors.”
He grimaced, immediately realizing his mistake. A twinge in my gut warned me to keep my mouth shut and not jump into my “let’s talk about your past” crusade again. He never showed any intentions of letting me win. But I didn’t heed the warning.
I put on my most disarming, persuasive face. “Really? Who? Was this in your previous light warrior days or your dark servant days?
Sighing, he brushed my bangs to the side. “Let’s not ruin the night with my mistakes, Iris.” He was smiling, but pain clouded his eyes.
I stared at the sky and huffed like a child. What could be so bad that he felt he couldn’t tell me? He should’ve known I wouldn’t ditch him after hearing about his bad past. I’d already witnessed plenty of his “bad past” first-hand when he was working as a dark servant, before he became a light warrior again. I didn’t ditch him then, so why would I now?
Whatever. I reached for the front door but he tugged on my arm and whirled me back around. Grasping the back of my neck with his other hand, he drew me in for a goodnight kiss. Or make-up kiss. Either way, the subject was closed for the night, and there was no point in resisting.
Oh, who was I kidding? I didn’t want to resist. Three weeks of dating officially and I still got chills just looking at his flawless tan face, messy blonde hair, and deep green eyes. Through Gregory’s training I’d learned that intense, vibrant eye color was a trademark of people with the gift needed to become a light warrior. But knowing that fact didn’t make Patrick’s eyes any less mesmerizing. Aside from all that, he also had a body that deserved to be on the cover of a magazine, though I never saw him grace the doorway of a gym.
Of course our flirting dated back much longer than three weeks, but we didn’t count that time as “dating.” Patrick had been a dark servant under Donovan then. Donovan had initially sent Patrick to manipulate and seduce me, blackmailing him with threats to hurt his family if he didn’t. Patrick didn’t like to think about what a jerk he’d been. I didn’t like to think about how I so easily let him lead me towards corruption. If it hadn’t have been for Kyra’s miraculously-timed intervention, we definitely would’ve gone too far.
But Patrick wasn’t that guy anymore. We considered the start of our relationship the same day we embraced the light. Two anniversaries in one.
I smiled at him as he backed away, watching me go inside. He smiled timidly as though unsure about something. Though he was rarely unsure about anything, I’d seen this smile a few times before when we’d left each other. Judging by the anxious feeling I got in my stomach, I wondered if he was toying with the idea of saying, “I love you,” but wasn’t sure how I’d take it.
I twisted the key in the doorknob but hesitated. Maybe if I gave him a little more time. I pivoted around slowly and waited.
“Goodnight, Iris. See you in the morning.” Patrick stuffed his hands in his pockets and headed back to Gregory’s car.
I had mixed emotions. I wasn’t sure I’d wanted him to say the words, but not hearing them was quite the letdown.
My mother was sitting on the couch watching TV alone. Seeing her and her thick fog of a shadow made me forget my minor problems. I hadn’t wanted to admit it, but her shadow had probably already progressed to a Permanent Shadow, Stage Two. No matter how hard I tried—talking to her, using my aura on her, telling her that unknowingly being the mistress of a married man wasn’t her fault—I felt like I’d never get rid of the leech. She just wouldn’t let go of her depression and bitterness towards her lying ex, Jenny’s cheating husband, and everything else that had gone wrong the last few months. And now she was lonely too.
She barely noticed me come in.
I trekked down the hall to Hanna’s room. My middle sister was the victim of a completely different type of shadow—illness. Nerves still sent tingles up my spine every time I checked on her. Would I find another thin but deadly black shroud hanging over her? Or worse—surrounding and suffocating her? Gregory had deciphered the nature of Hanna’s shadow at the hospital a few weeks before. They’d ordered an invasive bone marrow test for leukemia, but he helped the doctors discover she had double pneumonia instead. Much easier to treat, but still serious.
Of course, she was getting better every day, so I really shouldn’t have worried so much. Besides that, any shadow would’ve had to deal with her light figure, which was by her side more times than it wasn’t According to Gregory, some people are so in tune with what the light stands for and are so ready to do good that the light figures are drawn to them. My sister was undoubtedly one of those people.
I opened the door to Hanna’s room quietly in case she was asleep like she was supposed to be. She wasn’t. She was on her computer making up papers for the classes she’d missed. She
’d missed about four weeks of college altogether.
“Hey. How are you feeling? Do you need anything?” I sat on her bed carefully. She noticed.
“Ugh! I swear the way you and Mom tiptoe around me, you would think I was made of glass or something.” She grinned to show there were no hard feelings. “Seriously. You guys can give it a rest. I’m practically good as new.”
“Yeah.” I squinted my eyes and shook my head. “I’m not buying it.”
“Just because I’m a little weak—”
“Whatever,” I said. “Taking a shower drains you.”
She paused. “Okay, you have a point. But it won’t be long before I’m back to school and pestering you like normal.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure that never changed.”
Her somber reply took me by surprise. “Not like you’ve changed, that’s for sure.”
I opened my mouth for a second but then smiled, looking down at her daisy-printed comforter. I knew what she was thinking. Since becoming a light warrior, I was more positive, more pleasant. Definitely more outgoing. Most of all, though, I didn’t live with constant anxiety anymore. But she didn’t know all that.
“It just goes to show that tragic things sometimes happen for a reason,” she said. “Now, don’t get me wrong. You were already amazing. But if my illness somehow shook you into being even more...I don’t know. What are you?”
I laughed. “Um, brilliant? The best sister ever? A blessing to the world?”
My sarcasm was rich, but she smiled in return without a hint of sarcasm in her own voice. “We’ll go with that.” Then, without the smile, “You know, Iris...” She trailed off and placed her hand over mine, staring at our hands as if trying to find the right words.
Luminous Spirits (Shadow Eyes Series Book 2) Page 2