Shadow Summoner: Choronzon Chronicles Book One

by Tess Adair

  “Yeah, completely,” said Judith, nodding vigorously. “Straight inside. Got it.”

  “One more thing.” She paused for a moment, glancing briefly at Amy Williams, sitting inside her car. “Amy seems like a nice kid. But I’d be careful how much you tell her about any of this, and I’d caution you against telling anyone else.” She let out a measured breath and shrugged. “It’s not always a matter of how much you trust someone. Sometimes you just can’t know how they’ll react.”

  “Yeah, totally. There’s no one else I’d ever tell anyway.”

  With that, Judith gave Logan a brief, bright smile and a wave, then ran around to the other side of the car and got inside. Logan stayed put until they had driven out of sight.

  Then she sighed and decided to head back to the hotel. In so many ways, she was back to square one.

  Still, the flute gave her another jumping off point. She’d think about where to go with that after she got a little rest. The day had turned out quite long.

  Logan woke well after the sun the next morning. It was now Saturday, so she didn’t need to worry about going back to the school. Swamped by a reluctance to climb out of bed at all, she lay face up on the mattress for several minutes, watching the fiery hot sun beat down on the world outside. Eventually she decided to vent her frustration with this intractable mission by going on a short five-mile run over the rough terrain that had tripped her up the night before. She dressed quickly, slipped the room key in her pocket, and took off into the heat, already oppressive at 8:45 in the morning. As she sweat it out along the uphill path she’d set for herself, the events of the evening replayed themselves before her eyes.

  Who was Judith Li, anyway? Logan had met all kinds of spell-casters before, both affiliated and self-taught, but almost none who had claimed to possess the kinds of gifts Judith had mentioned—or, rather, none who claimed to possess them without any formal training whatsoever. A true eira Master, or even an eira student with years of training under her belt, might be able to summon light like Judith had, and even an inexperienced eira student might manage to summon a fire for a brief moment. But the ability to read thoughts was rare, even among eira Masters. Logan had met a lot of casters in her life, both eira and letha trained, and she only knew two people in the world who could do it. Of course, it was possible Judith was exaggerating, or outright lying. Hell, it was still technically possible that she was the summoner, and everything she’d said had been misdirection.

  But Logan seriously doubted that. She didn’t know exactly why, but for some reason, she couldn’t help but believe Judith Li. In fact, a small part of her still harbored the urge to chase her down at her girlfriend’s house and request her entire life’s story. Of course, she knew that wasn’t the best use of her time. Not yet, at least.

  Her girlfriend’s house. Logan felt a stab of pity for the girl. She remembered the leering face of Jason Reed and knew without a doubt that this was not a town where it would be easy to be strange. She could hardly imagine what growing up here must be like for any girl, let alone one as deeply and irrevocably different as Judith Li was.

  Before she knew it, Logan had reached the end of her predefined trail. By now, her body had begun to protest her decision to forgo any kind of fuel, so she reluctantly turned back to town. This time, instead of thinking about Judith Li, she focused her efforts on finding rocks and underbrush to climb over, hoping to improve her agility in the wooded terrain. She found her failure to gain any ground on the beast the previous night faintly embarrassing, and she refused to allow a repeat should she encounter it again.

  Eventually she had reached her hotel once more, so she slipped inside to take a shower before inflicting her presence on the general public.

  As she stripped off her workout gear, she inspected her body for any signs of damage. She’d gone to sleep with a few cuts on her legs and some bruising on one knee, but her skin looked perfectly unblemished now—apart from the old scar still evident on her right side. Though she found some satisfaction in her body’s quick recovery time, she often wondered what might happen if the wrong person ever noticed. She passed the small bathroom mirror on her way to the shower and caught a look at her naked upper body. If the light was dim enough, her bizarre markings could almost go unnoticed—almost. They stretched now from her collarbone to the edges of her shoulders, and she wondered when they might start to stretch down her arms. If. If they might. She reached her left hand to touch her right shoulder, and though it still felt similar to skin, there was no denying that it was a little bit rougher than most human skin, and when she pressed down, it had significantly less give. She tried to press down until it hurt, but she couldn’t seem to press hard enough. Maybe scales have no nerve endings, she thought.

  She was dawdling. She pushed away her pondering and jumped in the shower, washing herself quickly but thoroughly. Though she still believed that the beast would only come out at night, she hoped to find something productive to do with her day anyway.

  Once she was clean, she dressed in shorts and a sleeveless shirt that covered up her shoulders. Nobody had ever given her trouble about the markings, but she didn’t particularly want to take the chance that someone would someday. Shoving her wallet into a back pocket on her way out the door, she decided to forgo her jacket for the sake of the heat and hoped she didn’t get struck by a surprise vision as she pulled on her helmet and climbed on the Ninja.

  It only took a few minutes to get to the diner, and parking was mercifully easy for a motorcycle in this small town. She went inside and sat at the counter, and the same waitress she’d seen every day came over and placed a menu and a hot cup of coffee in front of her immediately. She scanned for the woman’s nametag. Sherene. Sherene was damn good at her job.

  A part of her wanted to order the biggest, greasiest thing on the menu, but she had started to feel concerned about the effect diner food was having on her performance. Maybe she was only being paranoid—it was hard to know for sure sometimes what affected her part-demon physiology and what didn’t. There were no reference books to consult about it. But she figured the human half had to enter into the equation somewhere, too. So she scanned the menu for something a little healthier.

  Oatmeal with fresh fruit. That should do it. And an egg on the side for protein. Maybe two.

  When Sherene came back, she gave her the order. Her cup was already half-empty, so Sherene filled her up, too. Logan took a mental note to make sure she gave her a more-than-decent tip.

  As she sat waiting for the rest of her breakfast to arrive, the bell on the door chimed behind her, indicating a new customer arrival. In her boredom, Logan decided she might as well test herself. She trained her eyes on her coffee, but her ears focused in on the rhythm of the footsteps, counting to see how many people entered. By her tally, two. And there was something else—ever so faintly, soft as a heartbeat, a thud against the flesh. Non-paranormal hearing would never have picked up on it. At least one of them was wearing something heavy at waist level—a gun? Two cops? She kept herself from turning around. After a moment, they rounded the counter and seated themselves at a booth in the far corner.

  She was right. There were two of them. And they were cops—or, rather, a sheriff and his deputy. Law enforcement. An opportunity seemed to present itself. Slightly unethical, perhaps, but they had entered a public place. Surely they knew it was possible they could be overheard. This could be interesting, she thought. She took a breath to relax a bit, then focused through the ambient noises of the diner until she had them.

  “—spoke to Johnston to make sure.”

  “And the funeral is today?”

  “Yeah, so there’s no chance we’re getting that body back now. Not that I expected we’d find anything new if we could get it back.”

  “The doc seemed pretty sure it was just an animal attack.”

  “What kind of animal you know pulls out the whole heart and leaves the rest untouched? The doc also said he couldn’t explain how clean the woun
d was. It was like whatever it was knew exactly where a person’s heart should be, and exactly how to tear it out the most efficient way poss—oh, g’morning Sherene. Uh, how’s things these days?”

  Logan stifled a surge of annoyance at her saintly and overly competent waitress, who had made a beeline to the new table to get them started as soon as possible.

  “These days? You mean since the last time you were in here, which was yesterday?”

  He chuckled. “Would you believe it if I told you I didn’t get too much sleep this week?”

  Logan listened to the clucking noise that sounded between Sherene’s teeth. “Oh, I would, honey. You can bet I haven’t slept much myself this week, not since what happened to that poor girl. I’ve had a prayer for that girl’s mother every day this week. Have you boys had to deal with it much?”

  “Not too much, actually,” replied the one Logan identified as the Sheriff. “It was an open-and-shut kind of thing. It’s tragic, but when you live out here, you have to expect these things will happen from time to time.”

  “I suppose so,” said Sherene with a sigh, though to Logan’s ears she sounded somewhat skeptical. “Well, that’s enough talk about it for now, I think. Do you boys know what you want, or should I come back?”

  “Same as always,” said the Sheriff.

  “Me too,” said the deputy.

  “Got it. Two Meat Lover’s Specials, coming up.” The clicking of her flats followed her away from their table.

  “Sir,” the deputy said timidly, “if you don’t mind my asking—why’d you tell her that?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “Tell her it was open-and-shut? Weren’t you just saying—?”

  “Ah, you know,” the Sheriff cut him off, then paused. “Well, some talk just isn’t fit to repeat to civilians, you know? Besides, like you said, the doc said animal attack. No reason to let anybody doubt that, especially just for the sake of telling them that maybe we don’t know what it was. Ah—you shouldn’t be repeating that either, deputy. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the deputy immediately.

  The topic seemed closed. When the Sheriff opened his mouth again, it was only to say something about some local sports team. With a slight sigh of disappointment, Logan slowly let her concentration waver. It seemed that was all the information she’d be getting out of them today. Besides, once the topic changed, it only took seconds for it to bore her to tears.

  Mercifully, Sherene put a plate in front of her. Perfect—something far better for her to concentrate on for a while.

  After she’d finished her meal, Logan hopped on the bike and made her way to the nearest grocery store, where she picked up some fruit and vegetables and cheese, hoping to cut down on her diner trips for the rest of her stay in town. Backpack full of produce, she rode on back to her hotel headquarters.

  Almost as soon as she’d walked in the door, her phone rang. As always, she knew who it was before she ever looked.

  “Hi Knatt,” she answered with some resignation.

  “You didn’t call yesterday.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Do you have any updates to the case?”

  Logan sighed. Her answer was obvious, but somehow he couldn’t make the leap. “Knatt, if I’d had real updates, I would have called.”

  “So in three days’ time, you haven’t made any progress whatsoever?”

  Making sure to lock the bolt and close the chain behind her, Logan stifled a second sigh. “You make it sound like I’m not doing anything at all. I promise you, I am working this case every second. True, it’s not moving nearly as quickly as I had hoped, but I can’t help that. Some cases resist solving a little better than others.”

  “You told me three days ago that you were going to follow a lead, and that you would get back to me.”

  “And I did follow that lead.” She walked over to the mini-fridge in the corner of the room and started unloading the contents of her backpack into it. “But, as sometimes happens with leads, it didn’t go anywhere. The girl that I thought was my main suspect had nothing to do with it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  She could have rolled her eyes, but there would have been no point. Knatt loved to micromanage, to force her to trot out every decision she made so he could judge it himself.

  “I can be sure because the beast attacked again last night, and when it did, I discovered my suspect protecting its intended victim.”

  For a merciful moment, Knatt was quiet—possibly stunned into silence. “I see. And in what manner was she protecting this victim, exactly?”

  “She threw some kind of cast at it,” Logan answered with a silent shrug. The room’s tiny fridge was now filled to capacity, so she shut the door and made her way over to the bed so she could collapse onto it. “It was—well, honestly, I’m not sure what it was, and I don’t think she knew, either. Anyway, the beast ran off in the middle of the fight. As far as I could tell, someone summoned it back with some kind of flute. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but it seemed pretty far off. I tried to follow, of course, but it lost me. So, my suspect is no longer a suspect. I’ll get back to interviewing on Monday, and in the meantime, I’ll be patrolling the town at night. And the flute thing should narrow down my list of possible monsters.”

  Again, Knatt was silent. She knew he must be working furiously to find something to criticize about her investigative strategy. When she heard him sigh, she knew he’d given up.

  “Very well,” he said with a soft cluck. “And what do you propose I tell the Order when they inevitably ask for my update?”

  “I don’t know. Stall them, I suppose. You know they’d only get in the way here.”

  Now it was his turn to sigh.

  “I do know that. Well. Call me the moment you have any more news.”

  And with that, he was gone. Her phone clicked and his side went dead.

  Love you too, she thought to herself. Even in her own mind, it came across more bitterly than she intended.

  Though the rising heat throughout the day made it hard on her, Logan pushed herself through her usual workout routine, then, for good measure, forced a second round through the woods near her hotel. Every second that passed in this town saw her frustration levels rise. While the low burn at her back reminded her that the Key wasn’t done with her yet, she couldn’t help but feel like she was spinning her wheels. She was trapped, and all the better missions she could be pursuing lay far beyond this stunted wasteland.

  But she couldn’t get to any of that until she was done here. Until she killed that damn elusive beast and moved on.

  After she’d pushed her body to the point of weariness, she finally returned to her room. She had precious little she could do to entertain herself, and the longer she was awake, the more the heat seemed to get to her. With the air of someone accepting defeat, she stripped off her clothes and lay down on the bed, making sure to set an alarm just in case. After all, she needed enough energy to keep her going all night if necessary. However long it took to find the beast again, she would do it. She had to.

  She woke again at dusk. Her watch was about to begin.

  The night air had grown mercifully cooler than the day. Logan perused the freestanding clothes rack until she found a pair of comparatively lightweight, stretchy jeans and slid them on, glad to discover that they neither added bulk to her frame nor prohibited her range of movement. In the base of the rack sat a plastic tub full of underwear; popping off the top, she scanned the contents for her favored sports bras. The one she landed on had two layers, hooking separately in the front, and held her as sturdily as leather. Over that, she slipped a loose white T-shirt and strapped the battleax sheath over her shoulders. She rotated her shoulders around a few times, moving her arms in wide circles to make sure that didn’t restrict her movement, either. Knatt preferred her to enter the fray armed to the teeth, but she’d gone astray following his advice at least once before. He’d instructed her to
strap herself with four separate knives, an axe, and a crossbow before one particularly memorable case they’d gone on, early in their partnership. Not only had she only needed one knife for the job, but the crossbow had gotten caught on a low-hanging tree branch, eventually causing her to trip and fall flat on her face. In full view of the client. She’d chosen to lean on her own judgment to decide her armament from then on.

  She went ahead and strapped one knife to her calf, but left it at that. The axe could strike a good killing blow, but she figured it was best to rely on her natural talents for most of the fight itself. She had a hard enough time navigating the terrain here without adding weight.

  And then she was out the door. Forsaking the bike altogether, she made a beeline for the trees behind the hotel, and took off running as soon as she hit the edge. She couldn’t do the bulk of her patrol from the bike, since the sounds and fumes would inhibit the senses she most needed to find her target. And since she now enjoyed both the cover of darkness and the dense foliage, she didn’t have to worry too much about a civilian spotting her supernatural speed.

  She took off so fast it almost felt like flying. It always felt like that, if she really let loose. She stumbled more than a few times as she went, but before long, she started to develop a rhythm with it. Run, stumble, slide and lean, straighten up, run, stumble. It was a good thing she already knew how fast all her scrapes and bruises would heal. Otherwise she might hesitate.

  Over the past few days, she’d gotten a feel for the lay of the land. It only took a few minutes of flat-out running southward for her to come parallel with the center of town. She slowed her pace, sure she must be closer to the beast’s preferred hunting grounds by now.