by K. A. M'Lady
Table of Contents
Also By K.A. M’Lady
Dedication:
In the Other World, there is a dark burning hole in the corridor of life
Prologue
The Darkness ~
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
K. A. M’Lady
Published by Mojocastle Press, LLC
Haymarket, Virginia
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Realm: Book Two - Shadow Slave
ISBN: 978-1-60180-012-1
Copyright @ 2008 K. A. M’Lady
Cover Art Copyright @ 2008 Vanessa Hawthorne
All rights reserved.
Excluding legitimate review sites and review publications, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Copying, scanning, uploading, selling and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without permission from the publisher is illegal, punishable by law and will be prosecuted.
Available online at:
http://www.mojocastle.com/
Also By K.A. M’Lady
Get Lucky
Song of the Wolf
Realm Book One: To Tell of Darkness
Realm Book Three: Illuminated Death
Faith Savage, Demon Huntress Series
Ramshackle Castle: Bent Poetry and Other Altered Verse
Dedication:
For Tad ~
For the deflowering of Vampires, Pixies and Weres.
For walking through the darkness with me to find our own light.
In the Other World, there is a dark burning hole in the corridor of life; a realm between the Light and the Darkness empty of hope, breath, and the possibility of being. A plane so obscure; so filled with the refuse of the oppressed that to truly hear the screams and sufferings of those who wander, you must bend beyond understanding to feel the pulse of a monster’s fears.
But have you ever wondered what happens when those weary souls go searching, seeking retribution millenniums old and thrice repaid? Who becomes their soul’s great captor? Who is the collector of their flesh and pain?
My name is Rihker Tennai. In the Other World, sometimes it takes a monster to know a monster—and a half-breed to skirt the distance and the Darkness in Shadow Land between.
Prologue
“Where is it you go at night when you first awaken?” The question hung suspended in the air between us like a dead thing, mutilated and vile. Repulsive; a thing that we didn’t wish to touch.
Looking back at me, he sighed and I could feel the sorrow span the distance between us. I could see it lingering in the dark shadows of his amethyst eyes.
“Do not ask of me things you do not wish to truly know the answers to, Rihker.”
“How do you know I don’t want the answers?” I asked, my words clipped, not understanding his response. God! Did he think that just because he’d been dead for a thousand years and more that he knew everything?
He knew nothing! Least of all me.
“You are not ready,” he replied, his own voice a soft whisper in the darkness of my soul as he turned to walk away.
“If you walk out that door, Kieran—if you’re going to her—don’t bother coming back,” I told him, anger filling my words like a slap.
I hoped it hurt, too. Because that is how his leaving me to go to that white bitch made me feel. How could he? After all she’d done to him—to us? For Prophet’s sake! What the hell was he thinking?
Suddenly he was on me, the stir of the curtains marking his movement. I hadn’t even heard him cross the room.
“Do you know what it is to hunger, Rihker?” he growled as his fingers tightened around my arms, pinning me to the wall.
“Do you know what it is to truly hunger for a life and a freedom that you know you will never see again?” His sanity was slipping into a dark void of pain. I had no words with which to respond to him as I looked into the endless well of suffering that marked his existence.
“Do you know what it is to live a thousand years with an ache so deep in your belly; a wound clawing its way from a soul that you no longer own...but you feel it, like a shadow in your mind, brushing against your bones, against your very flesh; and you swear you feel it every night of your life just upon waking as that first hint of breath and life rushes into your pores exploding like a million points of light.”
“Do you?” he questioned, the grip on my arms tightening in his anger. “It is a surge of power so miraculous that you’re certain it is what the memory of dawn must feel like. But you know, as the cold sludge of darkness fills you up and gives you breath, you’ll never know the warmth of its beauty again.”
His voice had grown so angry and cold; the chill of it seeping into my bones. I could feel his emptiness like a black void in the far reaches of my memory filling me up, then tearing me down until nothing remained but a sad lonely ache inside of me.
“Do you know what it’s like to walk this earth knowing that you’ve lived a thousand years; waking, walking, feeding while you’ve failed all of those who have turned to dust in their grave a millennium before you? Those who swore their allegiance to you, spilled their blood for you, gave their very lives and souls for you? Those who loved you—called you brother, husband, and friend?” His eyes faded to black, filling with blood-red tears that I knew he would not shed.
“The deaths of those I loved will walk with me as long as I walk this earth—and she did that to me. She did that, Rihker.”
My throat was a knot of tension. I wanted to speak but his anger was all-encompassing. His pain was so deep, so real there were no words that could ease such tremendous heartache.
“They are now the shadows that live in this empty husk that has no soul,” he groaned, clutching me to him. “Believe me when I tell you I have no love for Jirvel.” His voice was hollow, dark with hatred.
“Kieran, I’m sorry,” I whispered, ashamed that I’d made him confess so much. I knew that it cost him to reveal so much of himself to me. His past was not something we spoke of; it was a wound that he still bore so deeply and I had made him pick at it, poke at it just enough to make it bleed.
With a sigh of regret, he took my face gently into his hands and laid the barest of kisses upon my lips, not allowing me to speak further. “Regardless of my hatred for her, Rihker,” he said, pressing his forehead to mine, “regardless that she brings the Darkness to all that she touches, she is still my maker—the maker of my shadows—and I am still her slave.”
The Darkness ~
They say that when the wind blows you can hear the angels sing
The methodical melody is the flap of angel’s wings
The silent mist that rises on the currents of the breeze
Is the breath of sleeping dragons as they waken from your dreams
They say that when the rain falls it's from angel’s crying eyes
It flows down from the great heavens as they weep
for all our lives
The water flowing smoothly down the crenels of the earth
Fills the cups for sprites and fairies and subdues the goblins thirst
They say that when the snow falls like crystal diamonds from the sky
That it's iridescent angel’s dust from their wings as they fly by
The opalescent crystals form a glowing, icy haze
Where the queen of ice and winter frolics freely in her glade
They say the golden starlight is the twinkling of dragon’s eyes
As they watch and perch on top of all the clouds above the sky
And when the lightning flashes like a flame across the dark
It reflects the demons dancing as they create each glowing spark
They say that in the darkness that the dead do walk the night
That they feed on blood and fear until the glowing morning light
Underneath the silver moonlight you can hear the werewolves howl
As they hunt and kill their prey like demon dogs from hell’s deep bowels
They say that when night passes and its creatures take their rest
That they succumb to mother earth and that she steals their final breath
Beneath the morning sunshine lives the queen of good and light
She protects all of the creatures who live freely from her might
They say that all these stories are passed down from kin to kin
Each word a truth from family, to not believe would feel like sin
So when you hear the stories and you're not sure what is real
Remember it is the darkness that's the creature you must fear
K.A. M’Lady
Chapter One
Thy soul shall find itself alone
‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Spirits of the Dead ~ Edgar Allen Poe
I swore if I had to yell at one more stupid, idiotic, noodle-brained cop tonight as we scrambled through an overgrown, pitch-black, snow-dusted cemetery in search of Fred the Flesh-Eating Zombie; each of our chests heaving as fear and adrenaline tore through us in a mind numbing rush, my little green-haired head was going to explode.
Hello! How many times did I have to tell these lame-ass magic voids to stop shooting at my goddamn Zombie? So help me, by the Prophet and all that I hold holy, if they didn’t cut that shit out, I was going to zap someone in the ass with a ball of light. Repercussions be damned! I mean, who the hell ever told these half-wit humans that bullets would even work on a rampaging Zombie anyway?
I swore if I made it through this night unscathed, someone’s head was seriously going to roll. And I didn’t just mean Zombie Fred’s.
We were out off Main Street in the old Woodland Cemetery, running amok with the departed. The cemetery was a good six blocks deep, the night awash in chilled anxiety, and we were jetting back and forth between gravestones like a bunch of high school kids hopped up on alcohol, hormones, and a total lack of good sense in search of ghoulies to go with our good buzz. Well, at least the cops were. Me, I knew better.
What the green-behind-the-gills boys in blue didn’t realize as they were out playing Arnold meets the Predator was that this particular dirt shifter would have no problem ripping off their arms and beating them to death with them before it decided to suck the flesh off their bones.
This was definitely not how I wanted to spend my Sunday night. I should have been at home curled up in my nice warm bed between my two lovers where I belonged: a to-die-for—literally—Vampire named Kieran and his paramour—a hot, hunkie wereleopard he called Dragon. But no…someone had to loose a freaking Zombie in the middle of my nice freak October snowstorm. This in turn required my bosses at the Silent Court to ring me at two a.m.
I guess I shouldn’t bitch. I mean, at least I was no longer on suspension. Regardless, I was not in the least bit pleased. You try explaining to said lovers—who, by the way, have the most delicious ideas about midnight snacks—why a quickie will have to be enough.
A Vampire is never one to require a quickie of. I had the distinct feeling that I was going to owe him. Big time. The thought made me smile a tiny wicked grin as carnal delights of blood and flesh ran merrily through my head.
“Penny for your thoughts, Rihker,” Cage said as he stumbled beside me, leaning against the nearest grave marker to catch his breath. “Better yet, I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
Cage was frowning at me again, and he had the distinct look of distaste that flashed across his brow as if he’d realized his mistake. It seemed to be a recent trend between the two of us lately—he annoyed with me, and me not giving a shit.
Ever since this past summer and the job we were mutually assigned to, Cage had become a real killjoy to work with. It was on said job where I met my two new boyfriends and almost got my clock cleaned by my evil ‘Come to the Dark Side’ father.
Although come to think of it, Cage’s attitude towards me was usually shitty, so why should tonight be any different?
Couple the new boyfriends with the fact that Cage was my ex—well, that didn’t help either. He obviously disapproved of me and my sex life. But then again, being my ex-boyfriend, it wasn’t likely he’d approve of much of anything I did.
You see, Cage and I have this love-hate relationship thing going. He only thinks he wants me when someone else is around, and I despise him for it. That, and the fact that he’d dumped me because of a little minor detail like glowing.
Apparently sexual glowing is a turn-off for him. It freaked him out so badly that he broke up with me.
If you asked me, Cage’s whole problem is that I’m Other, and he can’t handle it—though you’d never get him to admit to that, at least not out loud. And it really pisses me off to no end.
So needless to say, it makes working conditions a little thick. Between the gore that we’re usually left looking at and the silences that seem to grow between us with each passing day, the more he works with me the more he bears witness to my Other Worldly gifts, and he just can’t handle them. In my opinion, Cage is a racist. A magical racist.
So he’s no longer my boyfriend, and he’s quickly on the verge of no longer even being a friend. Which is really too bad for him—I make a much better friend than I do an enemy.
“You can stop glaring at me, Rihker. I’m not going to say anything.” He turned away to look off into the graveyard. His downcast eyes and the way he clenched his jaw told me otherwise. It was just eating at him to bitch at me.
“There’s a first,” I said with a huff of laughter and rolled my eyes to the darkness above. “Since when?”
“Since I decided I no longer care who you fuck. If you want to fuck a dead guy, have at it. What the hell do I care? And if you want to fuck his lackey dog, you can do that, too.”
“You’re an asshole, Cage. You know that?” I shoved my way past him. “For your information, Dragon is a Wereleopard, not a dog. And the both of them are a better lay than you could ever hope to be.” I threw that little spike of bitch-with-a-capital-B over my shoulder as I stomped off into the darkness.
God! He’s such a prick, I swore as I stomped between the gravestones. Adam Cage was obviously never going to get over the fact that he dumped me, someone else wants me and I didn’t want him back.
What the hell was his problem, anyway?
I was so irritated with Cage that I’d wandered away from the road that wove through the center of the cemetery without even realizing it, my angry strides taking me deep into the heart of the cemetery.
Stupid ass! I swore as I looked around at the hodge-podge of grave markers. I wasn’t sure if I was referring to Cage or myself for letting him get to me. We had all agreed to stick close to the road, stay in pairs and signal back on the radios if we saw anything. So much for the damn plan.
Looking around at the darkness, I realized several things; Cage had the radio, the road was nowhere to be seen and my partner sucked. But I al
ready knew the latter.
My night vision wasn’t the greatest, but it was still better than a human’s and with the recent blood exchanges with my Vampire, it was on its way to getting better.
I figured I had to be about a hundred yards away from the road. The trees that were interspersed throughout the cemetery grew larger and thicker out here in the older section. Small gravestones sprouted up here and there among large monoliths with large crosses; angels with huge expanses of wings opened to take the souls to heaven, and the occasional praying prophet watched over the dead. There was even the occasional family crypt thrown in along the way. Lucky me. I was in the middle of deep, dark Deadmansville.
The darkness seemed to grow thicker here as well; like a heavy hand pressing down upon the world, stilling the shuffle of the wind, the lilting cadence of crickets and the memories of pain and sadness. Nothing seemed to move in the eerie silence that this part of the cemetery held within its grasp. Nothing but the pounding of my heart.
I wanted to kick myself for letting Cage get to me. I should have known better. Hell, just yesterday he’d pissed me off so badly on the way to a crime scene that in the midst of an argument, I ran my truck into a cement guardrail as I turned to scream at him. I had to give him a ride—which was a rarity to begin with—warning bells should have been ringing right there that the night was going to be shit on toast.
When the griping started, I should have opened the door and kicked his ass to the curb. But no…I sat there while he decided he needed to lecture me on the ramifications of having so many men living in my house and what it was doing to my reputation. It was about then that I’d lost my mind—and control of my truck. The shop said it would probably be about two weeks before it was fixed. Seems I broke the axel, the tie rod and the whole front quarter panel. I guess we were lucky we didn’t flip the damn thing over, since we bounced off the barrier so hard.