Shadow Walker (Revenant’s Series Book 1)

by Elissa Daye

  Lyssa put her head on his shoulder and breathed him in. Hunter kissed her neck, and she snuggled closer to him. She sat up and ran a finger through his hair. “Just think. Someday, every day will feel like this.”

  “Yes. It will, Lyssa. We just have to make it through until then.”

  He was right. If they continued the path they had chosen to walk, they would eventually have everything they’d ever dreamed of. Soon, they would join the fray once again. Until then, they would cherish these few days together.

  Chapter 31

  When they returned to the Watch Tower two days later, she felt extremely rested and peaceful. The time with Hunter had been amazing, and while she loved the break, she was anxious to get back to work. Lyssa would not be able to have the life she dreamt of until the Guardians had finished their mission to rid their world of the threat the Craven and the shadows posed. When she faced the others, she realized that Jackson wasn’t there.

  “Where’s Jackson?”

  “About that…well, he wanted to stay to tell you, but when the elders send you packing, you have to move quickly.” Julius looked away, uncomfortably. “Don’t look so worried, Lyssa. He got a promotion. Jackson wanted to wait around to tell you and tried to send a magical message, but it seems wherever you were staying was impenetrable to outside magic. Due to his immeasurable ability to take in information, the elders have made him an archivist. He will be responsible for research that impacts every sector of the Watch Tower.”

  Lyssa tried to hide her disappointment in his disappearance. It was an amazing opportunity for him, and she had always known the road would fork eventually, leaving them to travel on their separate paths. “So, that’s that?”

  “Don’t worry; he’s just in training right now. You’ll see him soon,” offered Serena.

  “Okay then.” Lyssa shook the cloud of sadness from her mind. “So where to?” She looked over at Julius and the others.

  “We have been working on portals on the West Coast in Washington. We were looking at your notes about the Seattle area.”

  Lyssa shook her head. “This area appears to be the worst vortex of negative energy. It’s one of the top ten cities with the highest suicidal tendencies. I know it’s true that the rainy atmosphere there has caused a higher trend in Seasonal Affective Disorder, considering it rains almost all the time, but the shadows have quite a hand in those numbers.”

  “Agreed.” Julius touched the globe and was searching for the portals she had marked on it.

  Lyssa leaned over and touched an area in Seattle, but moved her fingers higher up on the map near Puget Sound. The portal she was feeling was close to the water, so she assumed it must have been on the docks near there. “Here. This is our best bet.”

  They gathered their supplies for the trip, taking their biggest rose quartz crystals with them, and teleported to the spot she had indicated on the map.

  When Lyssa opened her eyes, she was met with a mysterious fog that filled the air with choking sadness. “It’s here all right,” she said quietly. The ground underneath was a little wobbly as she started walking closer to where she felt the portal nearby. Lyssa looked down to see that she was definitely standing on some makeshift dock that was swaying slightly with the lap of waves against the wood under her feet. She stopped for a moment and let her body adjust to the rocking motion, then moved once she felt her balance returning. The portal was at the end of the dock, and when she put her hand out to feel it, she almost jumped back. A sharp pain shocked the base of her skull, and she squeezed her eyes to shut it out.

  “This is going to be one hell of a fight.” Lyssa could tell right away that this particular portal was being held up with more energy than the last few she had gone through. Looking behind her, she saw that the Guardians were a few paces back. Hunter was nearest to her side. She smiled over at him and stepped into the portal. Even after her last adventures within the portal, she was not afraid to go back in. This time Lyssa had back up, and she would not be the only force in there against the shadows.

  Lyssa pulled out a piece of paper as soon as she entered to start mapping everything she could see. The world around them was actually the calmest she had seen in the Land of the Shadows. It was a small town that appeared as deserted as a ghost town. There were older buildings with wood siding, and the sidewalks were more dirt paths than anything else. The world was still cast in hues of black, grey, and white. If she had to compare this part of their world with any of hers, it was reminiscent of the towns she had seen in every old western movie on television as a child. Lyssa almost expected to see ghostly cowboys ambling down the streets, holsters hanging from their hips, and the gentle clank of the spurs spinning at their heels. But there was nothing there but a gentle breeze stirring up the dust around them.

  “This is certainly unusual.” Julius peered around them, perplexed.

  “No kidding,” Serena chimed in.

  “Let’s mosey along now,” chuckled Hunter.

  “For such a strong portal, I’d expect more activity inside it. Should we search the buildings?” Lyssa wasn’t sure what made her suggest it, for she certainly did not want to start searching them, but part of her felt like she had to offer it up. She felt more protected out here in the open than she would stuck inside the walls of these smaller buildings.

  “Do you sense any shadow movement inside?”

  Lyssa closed her eyes and let herself read the energy around her, but she felt a little off her game. Standing there for a minute, she took a deep breath and stilled the energy running through her. When she ran white light through every inch of her, the pounding in her head subsided. “No. None.” Everything seemed eerily quiet to her. “I think we’d be closer to some activity up there near those mountains ahead.”

  The group agreed with her assessment, and since they were able to see the mountain top destination in front of them, they teleported there instead of spending the hours walking. Once at the top, there was a larger clearing than she expected, as this mountain did not appear to have the steep peaks that other mountains seemed to have.

  Lyssa walked to the side, facing away from the town and peered over the edge. There was a small valley below swarming with shadows, and it looked as if they were having some kind of meet up around a massive black orb. That had to be this portal’s power source. But how could they get to it with all those shadows guarding it?

  “Here.” Lyssa pointed over the edge of the mountain. The others came over to view the scene below. “We can’t just go in and attack these shadows. They’ll be sure to summon more in their wake.”

  By the frown piercing Julius’s face, she could tell he was thinking about the situation at hand. “We can wait a little while. They might be expecting us to attack right now. They may be altering their movement patterns to counter our forces.”

  “Yeah, but if they keep shadows there at all times, we’ll have no choice but to attack them,” added Hunter logically.

  “I say we wait to see if any of them move away,” Serena added.

  The four of them waited for a few hours, just sitting there on the ridge. When Lyssa thought she was going to die from boredom, she saw several of the shadows take off. It looked like it was going to be their hunting time. “Looks like Julius was right. They appear to be moving out now. We’ll have to keep changing up our times of attack.”

  “That, or we’ll need to start bringing more Guardians with us,” Serena suggested. “Let’s move. We’ll take out the orb first, then attack the shadows.”

  They all teleported in near the orb, but not close enough to gain the attention of the shadows. Being cloaked certainly had its benefits. After creating shields to protect themselves, each of them pulled out their crystals and started to create orbs of light to send toward the obsidian counterpart in the middle. When their lights had grown large enough to dissolve the orb, they sent them floating at it.

/>   The shadows turned as the light passed them and started to lunge at them. The Guardians pulled out their wands, ready for anything they threw at them. Blast after blast of yellow light flew toward the darkness as more shadows came forward. They were almost overwhelmed by the swarming shadows, but they could not move until the orb was destroyed. Wave after wave of blackness pitched around them, but they held their own as the orb shattered before them.

  When only a handful of shadows remained, they thought they were ready to teleport out, but suddenly they were surrounded by more than just shadows. Dark figures approached them from all sides. These figures were all dressed in black and carried black obsidian wands in their hands.

  “Looks like the Craven are in closer league with these shadows now. We can’t handle all this without reinforcements. Another time.” Julius nodded at the Craven surrounding them before teleporting out.

  The four Guardians tried to teleport away as quickly as possible, but as she started to leave, she noticed that Hunter had been trapped between three shadows and four of the Craven. They were holding him down, making it impossible for him to teleport.

  “Hunter!” Lyssa sent blast after blast from the fiery tip of her wand. She managed to take down a shadow and one of the Craven standing behind him. She was about to take out another when her vision blurred, and a buzzing sound started to fill her ears. The buzzing turned to a painful screech, and she raised her wand to search for the source.

  “Lyssa, go!” Hunter’s eyes met hers, and his message was clear. Get out of here now! The Craven were advancing toward her and shadows coming behind her. Lyssa knew he was right, and as the Craven closest to him slammed his fist into Hunter’s head, she knew that she could not save him. Lyssa felt her heart rip out of her chest as she teleported away from the clearing.

  When she landed in the library behind the others, her knees buckled under her. She fell to the floor and raised hollow eyes to Julius. “They have him.” She felt the world moving around her, but she was stuck in slow motion. She could not hear what they were saying to her, felt only numbness as they tried to get her up into a chair. When she looked around her, her vision was stuck in a narrow tunnel as the world closed in on her. Putting her hand on her locket, she tried to feel Hunter, but his energy was gone. She just sat there, holding her locket in her hand, rubbing it as if she expected a magic genie to come out and take away this horrible nightmare.

  Lyssa woke up later to the darkness of her room. She opened her eyes and started to get out of bed as usual. Stretching her arms, Lyssa put one foot in front of the other. She turned around and looked at the empty bed and was instantly reminded of what happened earlier. Hunter. They had him. Was he still alive? As she put her hand around the locket again, tears started to roll down her face, for she could not feel him. Hunter? Where are you? Hunter! He never responded. Lyssa could not accept the silence that was slapping her in the face. He was gone, and this time, he might not come back. She couldn’t help feeling that it was her fault. She curled up under her blankets and let the darkness around her swallow her.

  Chapter 32

  When the others tried to tell her that Hunter was lost to them, she refused to give up. He couldn’t be gone. Lyssa would not rest until she found him again. She had spent every moment jumping from one portal to another. When Sector Four continued their quest to destroy the orbs, Lyssa stayed back, hoping that she would find him by focusing on his energy. While others had entered a state of mourning, she was in denial. When he was within the Craven’s fold before, she had thought she lost him, but the truth was she had never lost him, and she would not lose him now. Lyssa spent hours reliving that moment, wishing that she had stayed to fight against the darkness dragging him down. She had never shared the details of that moment because if the others thought there was something wrong, they would bench her. If she had only fought through that moment of weakness, Lyssa would not be filled with the guilt eating her up inside. While she wished she had remained, she knew that her life could very well have been forfeit if she had stayed. All she could do was continue to look for him. She would find him. Wouldn’t she?

  Another week passed before she started to lose hope. While the light of day surrounded her, she was trapped within perpetual night as darkness began to fill her thoughts. She was no help to any of their missions, for there was little hope and light left within her. How could she conjure enough to destroy any more orbs when she felt a kinship with it, the same blackness that entered the soul just before it gave up everything that it was?

  Lyssa spent her afternoon looking for signs of new portals forming in the world. There had been an increasing rate of portals, and while they had been taking the orbs down within the Land of Shadows, there was still a link between their worlds, as they had not successfully closed any of the portals. It seemed to be the next step, but in order to do that, they would need to rid their world of the Craven that kept opening them. Logically, they could take down every portal possible, but there was still the black magic of the Craven out there. They would only continue to cause a problem if the Watch Tower did not find a way to stop them. She kept reading and rereading any information that Logan and Hunter had collected.

  To Lyssa, it seemed that the Craven were somehow locking into some deeper black magic, and she was at a loss as to where it could possibly be coming from. Lyssa knew they had been mining the same rock materials that created the orbs in the Land of the Shadows, but there had to be some way that they were channeling energy from them. What exactly were they using? She made a note to ask Logan to search further for any keys that would help them…wands, crystals, orbs. There had to be something they were missing. It all had to start somewhere else. And if she could figure this out, maybe she could figure out why her body was reacting to their world the way that it was now. She knew the shard was still near her spine, but could one tiny sliver cause such a drastic change?

  That night when she went to bed, she expected sleep to elude her once more. Lyssa was surprised that her eyelids closed easily, and the sweet, warm embrace of sleep pulled her deep under. Soon, she was dreaming about Hunter again. It was the only time she got to see him. Her dreams up until this point had been laced with memories of their blissful time together, making her wake up feeling even worse than when she went to sleep. Seeing him so real and alive made it hard to let go of the idea that he was still not gone. The others saw her light deteriorating right before them and tried to encourage her to move on.

  Tonight, her dreams were different. She saw Hunter within some kind of dark cave. His body was severely battered, but he was breathing steadily. His eyes opened, and it looked as if he had been unconscious for quite some time. His body was shackled to the ground with the black snakelike chains she had seen wrapped around the souls in the first portal, but he was not bodiless like the others. He was in full form and trapped within someplace she did not recognize.

  Her soul reached out to him across the void and whispered his name. Hunter?

  Hunter looked around as if he were trying to catch a leaf on a breeze as her voice echoed in the cave around him. Lyssa. I’m here.

  Is that really you? Lyssa could see the grimace he made as he tried to move to another position. He had been severely beaten, and his face was so swollen, it was almost hard to see the smile that tried to break across his lips.

  I’m a little battered, but not broken.

  I’ll find you, Hunter. If it’s the last thing I do.

  Lyssa woke suddenly and sat up, shaking. She tried to pull her thoughts together. She closed her eyes and willed her thoughts to slow down inside her. Lyssa tried not to cry out because this dream had felt so real. But the biggest part of her was telling her that it couldn’t be true.

  Putting her hand on the locket she always wore around her neck; she prayed to the gods to feel his energy present. Lyssa sent her wishes quietly out into the air before trying to reach out to him with her mind. H
unter?

  It took a few seconds for his voice to register through to her, but she heard the faint reply. I’m here, Lyssa.

  We’ll find you, Hunter!

  Lyssa jumped out of bed and teleported to the library as quickly as possible. She knew it was still early morning, but she didn’t care. Running her fingers across the number four etched into her arm, she sent every ounce of energy into summoning the others. Lyssa called them a few times before the first of them made their way to the room. Finally, Serena and Julius made their way to the library, and it was clear that each one had just pulled themselves out of bed.

  “What is it, Lyssa?”

  “It’s Hunter.”

  Julius was trying hard not to roll aggravated eyes at her. “Look, Lyssa, we told you.”

  “He’s alive, Julius. He’s been unconscious, but he just woke up. He is trapped within some dark cave, and I assume that he is trapped within one of the shadow portals. I’m thinking the Craven may have realized who he was. He’s badly beaten, but he’s alive. They’re trying to break him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Come now, Julius. If anyone would know, it would be Lyssa. They’re soul mates.”

  “Okay. So now what?” Julius looked over at her speculatively.

  “Now, we find Hunter. I’ll start looking through my index of portals and see where I feel his presence the strongest. As long as he remains conscious, then I should be able to find him. We will need quite a few Guardians to help get him out, and we will have to stake out the place before we attempt a rescue.”

  “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll make sure you have any support you need. We will always fight for one of our own.” Julius put his hand on her shoulder and patted her comfortingly. It was the first time Julius had offered her comfort since Hunter was taken.