Winter Shadows

by Richard Amos

  And I’d found him. He was mere feet away.

  “Yes,” the shadow hissed.

  The platform, the railway … it fell away. I was in London again. It was the night before Halloween—my second wedding anniversary.

  Funny how things work out … Two anniversaries for the price of one …

  Back on Redchurch Street, east London. The rain was really coming down. And there we were, drenched and …

  “I’m leaving you, junkie. Think I want to be near a man like you? Dirty junkie nobody wants to love; nobody wants to fuck.”

  I was watching myself, emaciated and distraught as Michael spat the cruel words at me. Man, was I thin back then.

  “Please, Michael!”

  “Fuck off, Jake! I don’t want nothing to do with you.”

  “I can make it better! Alan’s a wanker. What do you even see in him? Just come home.”

  Michael’s face—his lovely face—so full of hate …

  “I hate you, Jake. I actually hate you for everything. Look at the state of you! You’ve ruined your life. I’m not staying on a sinking ship. Go crawl into a corner and die.”

  “How can you say that to me?” I went to grab him, and he shoved me hard. I landed on my arse in a puddle, a complete sobbing mess. “Michael …”

  “I tried so hard …” he said. “I can’t do it anymore. Alan loves me.”

  “I love you!”

  The street was pretty dead, but the roar of traffic from the parallel Bethnal Green Road was pretty audible.

  I couldn’t stand this.

  “Quit this,” I demanded.

  The scene played on.

  “Go be someone else’s problem. I’m done.”

  “I fucking hate you!” The me in the puddle punched the ground. “I hate you!”

  He came down a side street, all in black. His white orb of an eye glowed with deathly intent. Before anyone knew it, he had plunged the blade into Michael’s heart.

  My husband went down, blood gushing from the hole in his chest. I was screaming, clawing across the pavement as people came running over.

  The white eye guy was gone.

  “You think I don’t play this scene over and over in my head?” Tears flowed hot down cheeks.

  “He killed your love,” the shadow said. “Even if love had left you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Kill your enemy, and I shall set you free. You do not need this city or those people. All you are is an instrument for their freedom. But it is useless. There is no way you can stop us. Time changes things, Jake. Your world is set to change. Let it happen, let the time of the beast come to be.”

  “Y-you have your own realm. What do you want with mine?”

  “Embrace your destiny, Jake. Kill and be free.”

  Kill …

  The creepy voice of the goddess was a palate cleanser of awesome proportions.

  Kill … Feed …

  “I’m embracing my destiny.” Reality snapped back into focus. “My destiny is to shut you down.” I jutted a sparking finger at him. “Then he’s next.” I gestured to the white eye guy.

  “Fool!” the shadow hissed. Then it chuckled again. “Did you think you could just walk in here and undo all of our work? Foolish, weapon. It is not as simple as that.”

  Two red-skinned humanoids came out of the dark tunnels, fish hooks erupting over every inch of their bodies.

  Hooksters.

  Oh, shit.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I turned around to see another three hooksters walk out of the tunnel behind me. Their eyes were beady and black, their mouths dripping saliva down their chests.

  Behind them, metal clanged and barred gates slammed down. The same happened at the other end of the tunnel.

  Oh, dear.

  “Welcome to my little snare,” the shadow said. “We cannot have the weapon running around this city anymore.”

  Oh bloody dear friggin’ God! We were sealed in!

  I glanced up at the platform. There was a metal panel there, clearly covering the only other way out.

  Shit!

  “Enjoy the fight,” the shadow said. It twisted away, passing through the ceiling as if it were nothing.

  “Now what?” I said as the hooksters closed in.

  A trap. Just wonderful. I knew this was too bloody easy!

  “We fight,” the white eye guy said.

  “I gathered that bit.”

  The hookster closest to me yanked out one its hooks and brandished it menacingly. Okay, then.

  “Hold on,” the white eye guy said. He sent some power out, knocking our enemy to their arses. “Get on the platform.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it!”

  I scrambled up there. “Can’t you keep blasting them?”

  A hookster leapt up to join me just as the white eye guy roared. One of the others had sliced his cheek with one of those hooks.

  Never mind him, though. I had this bastard to worry about.

  It rushed me, swiping with the hook which gleamed in the firelight.

  I leapt back, just avoiding getting snagged. It bubbled up, that cool sensation of my protective shield as the hookster went in at me again. The dark blue energy rose up around me. The hookster roared and spun away, crashing into the wall.

  The shield came down.

  This was my chance. I went for it, charging at my enemy. Before I got close enough, another one came up to the platform and drove a hook into my left shoulder. Pain made itself known, and I cursed and did my best side kick that Dean had taught me. A hook burst through my boot and foot.

  I was stuck to the hookster. And bloody hell did it hurt!

  The hookster shook its body and the hook ripped through flesh and bone, tearing the boot to shreds of leather. The other one who’d met my shield came and drove a hook into my side, then another into my back.

  Holy shit!

  I tried to fight, to grab hold of one of them with my sparking hands. Another hook entered my left thigh.

  My shield returned, sending them off me. Their hooks ripped from their bodies and stayed in me. I couldn’t breathe, the burn of the pain white hot.

  The healing energy came and eased things. But I’d need a quiet spot to pull these hooks out to make a full recovery. Such a thing wasn’t gonna happen any time soon.

  My shield flickered and was gone once more.

  I was on one leg, not able to put my messed up right foot down. Why the hell had I done that kick? Idiot!

  My guardians would be feeling my distress down our SOS bond right now. No matter what the shadow said, I had a duty to them and they were my friends. I had to get out of this!

  “Jake!”

  The white eye guy was on the platform, dripping blood everywhere. He sent more of his power out, clearing the platform of hooksters in a temporary fix.

  “No,” he said, taking me in.

  Another wave of green energy came.

  The white eye guy struck again as the hooksters leapt back up to hurt us. They crashed back down to the rails. The white eye guy collapsed to his knees. He was hurt, really cut up.

  Good …

  I shook my head. “We’re fucked,” I said. “But I’m not willing to die either.”

  “I can get you out … argh!” Another surge of power came from him, knocking back our enemy.

  “What? How?”

  “Get ready to run like hell.”

  “What about you?” I couldn’t believe I was even asking that question?

  “Oh, does Jacob care?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “See that metal covering the exit?”

  “Yeah.”

  He roared and it ripped away, aiming it at the hooksters. A stairway was exposed. “Run.”

  I couldn’t make that, surely. Even though I could put my foot down again with the help of my healing magic, it still ached like crazy. There was no way I’d outrun the hooksters.

  “I said run!”

 
And I did, throwing all anxiety out the window. I wasn’t gonna die down there. I had to live.

  I took the stairs two at a time, right foot protesting. More green healing power helped ease it again. My sparks were the only light I had to guide me up the dark stairwell.

  Come on!

  There was a rumbling coming through the walls.

  What the hell?

  The next thing I heard was the roar of the white eye guy and an explosion. I stumbled forward but kept my balance. A cloud of dust ripped past me, choking everything in a gray cloud.

  I got a lungful of it, coughing violently. It burned my throat and stung my eyes which I squeezed shut. But I didn’t stop. I kept pushing on blindly.

  The white eye guy … He’d done something down there to … save me.

  I came into a concourse, free of the dust. It was damp and snow-dusted, the roof having caved in here and there, the windows smashed in too. The old barriers were broken, and there was rubbish everywhere. Graffiti decorated the walls.

  Taking in the fresher air, I coughed some more as another wave of healing power did its work. The pain was still ripe, but I limped on.

  Something snagged my bare foot—glass. “Bloody hell.”

  A groan answered me.

  I saw them then, the sort-of zombies. They were thin and malnourished, some of them tangled up in sleeping bags. This was a sanctuary for the homeless, for the lost. There were five of them staggering toward me in the hidden pocket of the city.

  The one closest to me reached out with grubby hands. I shuffled out of the way, and he tripped and fell on his face. Poor guy.

  This had to stop.

  I knew places like this would exist in Coldharbour—they were in every town and city all over the world. I just hadn’t come across one yet. Already vulnerable, I now had to resort to hurting them. The next zombie came and grabbed me. I punched him on the side of the head, then kicked him in the stomach to send him to the ground.

  Holy crap that hurt! Pain exploded down from my foot, down my leg.

  Let the healing magic keep coming!

  They lived in this awful place, fully at risk of being eaten. Some of them probably had been over the years. But then the hooksters came down to the seafront to feed every three months, apparently. Maybe these people were safer here than we were down there.

  I doubted it.

  When this was over, I had to do something. We couldn’t leave these people unprotected like this.

  “I’ll save you,” I said.

  But I may have already doomed them if the hooksters came bursting into the concourse. Would they kill the zombies? They weren’t all rotting flesh and stuff—still edible. How many of them had been eaten? Maybe another beast fed on them. After all, no one really came to this part of the city. And why weren’t these people leaving? There was some sort of repelling rune around this area, I’d been told. It should’ve driven them away.

  Shit. I had to get out of there. There was nothing I could do while they were in this state. I made a mental note to sort this. Dodging another one, I squeezed through a gap in the boarding across the main doors of the station.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Man, was I happy to be outside again. I wanted to fall into the snow and just sit for a while, screw the cold. But I had to carry on.

  My healing power kept doing its thing, perking me up every thirty seconds and working hard to fix my body. As I walked, I pulled out the hooks that were still embedded in me. My teeth felt like they were gonna crack under the strain of clenching them together. I couldn’t cry out or make a sound to draw attention to myself, despite how much it hurt when the metal ripped out of my flesh.

  Bloody hell!

  I needed to feed, find myself a nice beast to kill. The sparks were offline, so I’d have to wait until one picked a fight with me.

  After five minutes of walking, I came to a park with a lake, sitting on the fringes of a housing estate. The water was completely frozen over and everything else smothered with snow. A maze of concrete walkways and tower blocks, smaller than those Wand Towers back south, made up the estate. The gray brick cut through the white, standing firm. The song of zombie moaning came from that vicinity. I wouldn’t be heading that way anytime soon.

  I wiped snow off a sign, which turned out to be a display—a map behind Perspex with some information about the local wildlife.

  This was Hamlet Park. I studied the map and worked out the direction I needed to head in. I couldn’t see beyond the thick trees that encircled the area—apart from the housing estate.

  With no other form of transport, I started walking. Hopefully, the healing magic would keep me from getting frostbite on my bare foot.

  This really sucked balls.

  So, I waddled through the deep snow toward the trees. I didn’t want to go in there, but it was the quickest way. Going round would take time and bring me to the housing estate and a zombie party. No thanks.

  Woodland beasts came to mind. I pulled out my phone with the idea of filtering a search on the app for this area’s beasts. The screen was smashed and black. I tried switching it on. Nothing. Great, so I was off the grid now, apart from the SOS bonds.

  I had a long walk ahead of me.

  My sparks came to life in the woods.

  I knew it!

  There were streetlights along what was clearly a path cutting through the trees, buried in the snow beneath me. But they were weak, not giving me a good scope of my surroundings.

  “Don’t mess me around!” I said. “Just come fight me if you’re gunning for it!”

  And it did.

  The beast had the body of a squirrel and the head of a praying mantis. What the hell? Its fur was white, the head a regular green. That couldn’t be normal, even by beast standards. Was there some form of genetic tampering going on over in the beast realm?

  The beast squeaked and clicked, leaping at me. It landed on my chest, claws digging into my flesh. This was one crappy day! Its mantis head went to start chomping mine off with its freaky jaw thingies. I hated the praying mantis—just so creepy!

  Well, I wasn’t a male who it’d just got it on with and about to lose my head. I grabbed it and made short work of it.

  It was good to get a feed.

  Shaking off the golden shards, I carried on. I was just a walking mess of hurt and cold.

  Another squirrel-mantis leapt from the trees, spraying snow from the branches.

  I caught it in both hands. Nice catch by me!

  After three more squirrel-mantis attacks, I came out of the trees and into an open stretch of park. The city twinkled before me, the chorus of groaning zombies on the wind. Those lights of Coldharbour were deceptive in their welcoming glitter. Danger roamed every corner. I was so happy to see them.

  My sparks were still on. I threw a glance back at the woods to see if a squirrel-mantis was attempting an ambush.

  Nothing.

  There was clearly something lurking around.

  Crap.

  I trudged on some more, putting some distance between me and the woods to see if that would turn my power off. Could just be that it was picking up on those bloody squirrel-mantis things. If I never had to lay eyes on that particular strain of beast again, I’d die happy.

  The sparks continued to blaze. In fact, they were spitting quite aggressively.

  I was in pain, cold and pissed off. Being done was not even close to what I was feeling.

  “Come out and play,” I snapped. Dark rage simmered within. “Show yourself, knob head. Don’t hide. Come on!”

  The ground rumbled.

  “That’s it … Come on …”

  Did I really want to fight something that made the ground rumble?

  “Fight me!”

  The ground before me burst open, spraying dirt and snow up in my face. Something akin to cold jelly snared me in a sticky grip, coiling itself all the way up to my knees. It seeped through the denim of my jeans.

  And it pulled, dragging
me forward and into the brand new hole that’d been made in the ground.

  Before I could think, I was being dragged through darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I was spat out and the jelly let me go. With the grace of a cat, I landed perfectly on my feet. Well, not that perfect seeing as it sent shooting pains up my right leg thanks to my foot still being on the mend.

  A healing pulse of green went through me.

  “What the hell?”

  I was in an underground chamber. The walls were mud and roots, and it stunk of damp. A fire burned in the middle of this place, a huge black cauldron dangling above it.

  “Welcome,” a voice behind me said. It was female.

  I turned to face the speaker. The beast was a bulbous thing made of translucent jelly. It had the odd shape of a naked human woman, with huge, saggy breasts resting on an enormous stomach. Hairs sprouted haphazardly from the pock-marked skin of that belly. In contrast, her head was bald. A stringy thing dangled from her vagina like a limp worm. Two white eyes, devoid of pupils, drank me in.

  “And who are you?” I said.

  “Let’s just say that I am an opportunist.”

  “A hideous opportunist.”

  “Oh, such vicious words, Mr. Winter.”

  “Piss off with your formalities.”

  “There is nothing wrong with having manners, is there?”

  “So, you know who I am?”

  “What a ridiculous statement. Of course, I do. You are the most famous man in the city. Well, within certain circles at least. How does it feel to be blessed with such a gift?”

  “Feels great, especially when I’m killing one of you.”

  “I thought as much. You have done well to have survived so long.”

  “You thought I’d be dead by now?”

  “Indeed, I did.”

  I didn’t like the look of that cauldron. “I’m pleased to be a disappointment.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Far from it. It seems the sun has shined down upon me, bringing light onto my home.” She waved her wobbly arms in a sweeping gesture.