“You were right,” she says, “it was important. It wouldn’t be home without them. ” She looks lovingly at the two animals.
She said home.
“You’re okay with living here then?” I ask.
“I don’t mind living here at all. I know you have your reasons. I just want you to share them with me.”
I sigh and sit down on the edge of the bed.
“You need to know everything. I’m just scared you will see me differently afterwards.”
“I would never stop loving you.”
“I’ve done bad things Natalie. Countless-”
“Shh,” she hushes me and takes my hand. “Trust me, please.”
She stares at me with loving grey eyes. How could I refuse her anything?
“Very well,” I say. “I’ll tell you everything.”
______________
And I did. I told her everything I could possibly tell someone. Everything about how I was born, what I did, how I did it, who I was, who we all were, I talked till our eyes grew heavy and then I talked some more. My heart fluttered around like a bat the whole time. I watched her face for signs of disgust and hatred for me but she hadn’t lied to me. She didn’t stop loving me.
“So this is your safe house?” she asks. After explaining everything and answering what felt like a million questions, finally, she asks about the house.
“Yes. I thought it might come in handy one day if they turned on me.”
“They would do that?”
“You never know what a demon will do.”
“Hmm,” she mumbles, deep in thought.
“What is it?’
“Nothing, just wondering if I’m crazy.”
“Why would you be crazy?”
“Well, I’m lying in the arms of a demon and I never felt safer in my entire life.” She laughs tiredly.
“Maybe you’re a little crazy.” I kiss the top of her head and she yawns. “I think it’s time you got some sleep.”
It was late into the night and I was drained from weeks of no sleep and hours of talking. I needed rest as well.
She nods and scoots closer to my side. I turn off the light and pull up the covers, snuggling her in the warm blankets. She sighs happily as she falls asleep. I watch her for a few minutes; enjoying the feel of her body pressed against mine. Shadow and Leo are curled up; sound asleep, by our feet. I smile to myself as I watch them all sleep. Maybe I’m crazy too; because I’ve never been happier than with a couple furry beings and a tiny grey eyed book lover in my arms.
Chapter 18
A warm tongue wakes me up. I shove Shadow’s face away and wipe the slobber from my cheek.
“What is it?” I groggily pat his head but he shoves my hand away and whines. Then I hear it. Crying.
Natalie quietly cries and moans in her sleep. I knew eventually that the attack would affect her; I just hoped I could protect her from it somehow. I reach out to wake her from her nightmare but something stops me. I know I shouldn’t, but I have to.
“I’m sorry, my sweet, just this once.”
I close my eyes and invade her mind.
Screams slice into my heart immediately.
“Stop! Please!” Natalie pleads as she crawls away. Three men stalk after her, cruel smiles plastered on their faces. Anger fills me as I recognize one of the faces. The snake from the market.
My blood boils. I told him. I warned him. Now I’d kill him. First though I’d start with wiping him and this awful event from Natalie’s memory. My shadows spread out, covering the men and the room, when they are completely submerged in black I start to crush the memory from existence.
“Stop!” Natalie yells.
She’s suddenly right in front of me.
“Natalie, how did you-”
“Get out!” She yells, shoving me hard in the chest. I fall backwards out of her mind.
I wake up on the floor, gasping to get air into my surprised body. Natalie looks down at me accusingly from the bed.
“How could you?” she whispers.
“How could I? How could I?!” I jump up, flinging myself across the room in a rage. I needed to get out of the house.
“You’re mad at me?” she asks incredulously. “I trusted you never to use your powers on me!”
“How could you not tell me who attacked you?” I stare back at her with the same accusing eyes that are looking at me.
“I knew you’d hurt them.”
“They deserve to be hurt.”
“No one deserves to be hurt, Jack.”
“How can you say that? After what they did to you!”
“The police will take care of it.”
“The police? Is that what was going on at the hospital? You told them and you didn’t tell me?!
“Yelling at me doesn’t change anything!”
The fire in my gut changes. She’s right, it doesn’t change anything, but I know what will. I hurriedly slip on my boots and start lacing them.
“Where are you going?” she asks. She’s scared. Not of me but of what she thinks I’m going to do.
“Out.”
“Please don’t do this.” Her eyes plead with me.
I stand up. Slowly the darkness consumes me.
“I’m sorry.”
Then I vanish.
______________
Bones splinter as I slam them into walls. Blood sprays as I pierce flesh with razor like shadows. Tears streams as they beg for mercy.
“You can’t do this, we have protection!” The crippled snake yells from his spot in the corner. I put him there so he could watch me work on his friends. I was saving him for last.
“No protection on earth can save you from me.” My eyes burn red with fire. I was not stopping until each one of them felt the pain Natalie felt 100 times over. And then 1,000 times more.
“Oh he’s not from earth and when he finds out you messed with his plan? Oh you’ll be sorry.” The snake coughs up blood. Strangely he is still smiling, his teeth stained red.
“Not from earth?” My curiosity spikes. I drop his friend and slither over in front of him. “Tell me more.”
The snake laughs.
“He’s like you.” The blood red smile widens triumphantly.
“No one is like me.” I trail my shadow down his face and he flinches. Good.
“I know what you are. He told me everything and he won’t let you do a damn thing to me. It was our deal.” The smile is gone, replaced with an unsure tremble.
“You made a deal?”
“No, he made a deal.”
“Impossible.”
“It’s true! He came to us.”
“Why? What for?”
“He wanted us to hurt her. Not kill her, just rough her up really good.”
“Who?”
“I’m not telling you. He said if we told anyone his name that’d our deal would be off and he’d come for us.”
I get right up in his face and breathe shadows into his eyes, blinding him. He screams and claws at his eyes.
“Now you won’t see either of us coming. Give me a name before I rip it from you.”
“I can’t!” Water drips from his unseeing eyes.
“Very well.”
For being one of Portland’s notorious snakes, the man didn’t hold out long.
Chapter 19
“Natalie!”
I pop into the bedroom and scan the room. She’s sitting in the bed.
“Thank the stars, you’re alright. Come on, we have to go.” I start grabbing her things but she doesn’t move, just stares at me. “Natalie, I know you are upset with me but there’s no time. We have to leave.”
She shakes her head no. I kneel in front of her, begging her to come with me. Just another no.
“Natalie, don’t make me make you leave. Someone very bad is going to come after you and if I don’t find us somewhere safe he’ll take you from me.”
Another shake of the head.
“Dammit Natalie, I-”
Wait. I know what’s wrong. I take her hands and soften my voice.
“Do you remember what you said to me in the diner when I asked if you could trust me?”
She shakes her head yes.
“You said it was my eyes. You saw something in them. I’ve never forgotten that, and do you know what I see in your eyes now?”
She tilts head questioningly and I stab her through the chest with one of my shadows. Shock plays across her face. She looks down at the black spear, a trickle of blood drips from her lips.
“Darkness. You’re not Natalie,” I growl.
I pull back my shadow and the figure in front of me pools onto the floor like putty. A Shadow Mimic. A really good one but Mimics are severely limited. They can’t talk and their movements are restricted to one area. This one was allowed face movements.
“That took you less time than I thought,” a voice purrs behind me. I turn around.
“Kest.” The name leaks from my mouth like air. A rare slice of fear runs through my body. “Where is she?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing. I have some unfinished business with her.”
“You mean, you don’t have her?”
“I wish I did but sadly, no. She wasn’t here when I arrived.”
What? Where did she go? She must have left after I went after the snake. I breathe a sigh of relief; she was safe, for now.
“Don’t look so relieved. Once I find her then the games will begin.”
“Don’t make this about her. You’re mad at me. I broke the rules, just take me and be done with it.”
“You know that’s not how we do things, Jack. You have to be made an example of. It’s nothing personal, just business.”
“You won’t find her; not before me.”
“I won’t need to. You will bring her to me.”
“Why in hell would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t; I will slaughter her entire family, all the way down to the sixth cousins.”
“You wouldn’t. It would attract too much attention.”
Kest laughs.
“Things are changing, Jack. The big man wants attention.”
“Why?”
“Tsk tsk, that kind of information is only for those loyal to the cause. Last I checked, that wasn’t you.”
“I am! I’ve still been bringing in deals.”
“Last I checked lowly deals and shacking up with a pure human wasn’t the job description.” His eyes flicked red. “You have until tonight.”
Kest vanishes in a vortex of inky smoke and I immediately teleport to Natalie’s house. She isn’t there. Next I try the pound, no again. The bookstore, her job, the library, the park, her job, she’s nowhere. There’s only one other place she’d be but I don’t know why she’d go there.
I teleport one more time. I pop into a room with familiar furniture. Furniture I hadn’t gotten around to breaking again yet. I tune my ears and follow the sounds of breathing to my bedroom. Brown hair sweeps across my pillow. Shadow and Leo lay at the foot of the bed. I sigh and collapse onto the bed. Her eyes open, revealing grey pools of sadness.
“Thought this would be the last place you’d look for me,” she says.
“It was,” I admit.
We lay in silence, neither one of us wanting to say what needed to be said. But finally, she does, she’s braver than I am.
“Did you find them?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hurt them?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill them?”
“Yes.”
A minute of silence.
“I figured.”
I stare into her eyes.
“Do you still love me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you wish you didn’t?”
“No.”
“I don’t know why fate cursed you to fall in love with me.”
“Maybe it’s because of all the spiders I’ve squashed. Karma is catching up to me.”
I laugh and stroke her face.
“Karma catches up to us all eventually.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“How did you get here?”
“I took a cab.”
“They let you bring the animals?”
“I paid extra.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Swiped your keys.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I was angry and I didn’t want to just be waiting there when you got back. I didn’t want you to think I approved.”
“I’m glad you left.”
“You are?”
I nod.
“Natalie, everything has gone terribly wrong and I’m afraid I won’t be able to fix it.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“This isn’t something that we can just ignore,” I say in surprise.
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“Can you do something for me, Jack?”
“Anything.”
“Can you love me? Love me completely? I want to know you, wholly. Just for a few hours can it just be us? Together?”
I knew what she was asking and I wanted nothing more than to give her what she wanted for the rest of her life. Thinking on it, that might not be very far off.
“Okay.”
I kiss her. She kisses me. I kiss her again. And for the next few hours I grant her wish. I let it just be us. I give her what she wants, I grant her wish, but instead of taking something for it, I give. I give my heart, wholly and completely. And nothing would ever feel as good as that.
Chapter 20
“So Kest wants me?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not going to be quick is it?”
“No, it won’t. I’ll fight, of course I’ll fight, but you need to be prepared for if I lose.”
“You won’t lose.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you love me. You won’t let him hurt me or my family.”
“I wish love was all it took.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Shadow and Leo sit staring at us solemnly. This could be the last we see of each other. The ever helpful neighbors will take care of them. I kneel down and pat Shadow on the head.
“You be good for those poor folks alright?”
He lays his head on my knee, staring up at me with big sorrowful eyes.
“I will return if I can, my friend.”
Natalie says her goodbyes as well, stroking and holding Leo close, but all too soon the deadline approaches. They whine and mew as we open the door to leave. Natalie goes first and my heart clenches as I shut the door, sealing their cries inside.
______________
We pull up to an abandoned building outside of the city. The old blue paint peels and flakes like sunburned skin; beneath it is a rusted brown color. The building used to be a warehouse for a construction company about fifty years ago; now it was just Kest’s hideout.
“This is it?” Natalie asks.
“Yes.” My hands squeeze the steering wheel.
“Jack,” she says calmly taking my hands, “don’t worry. I know everything will be fine.”
She looks into my eyes with such confidence that I almost believe her.
“Let’s go.”
The condition of the inside of the building matches the outside. Kest never had anything fixed when he moved in. I think he likes the natural ramshackleness. It probably reminds him of hell in a way. Natalie walks close to me and I guide her around fallen structures and chunks of concrete. There are no lights until we get to the middle of the warehouse where Kest has a ring of lights set high up on the ceiling. The effect is a single circle of light surrounded by darkness. It never occurred to me before but I wonder if Kest was going for some kind of heaven symbolism. Then again maybe it’s just so there is a san
ctuary where no shadows can be used to hide in.
We enter the circle and wait. Only a second passes before Kest emerges from the darkness in front of us. He’s in his usual tailored suit; in one hand he holds a glass of wine, in the other a whip. Natalie stiffens beside me and I resist the urge to comfort her. I wouldn’t bring any weakness to Kest’s attention.
“Welcome,” Kest greets. “You find the place okay?”
I scoff.
“Don’t waste your breath on pleasantries, Kest. It doesn’t become you.”
“If you want to cut straight to it then I am more than happy to oblige.”
He downs the rest of his drink then lets the glass slip from his fingers. Before the glass shatters against the concrete the end of the whip wraps around Natalie’s wrist and jerks her towards him. I send a shadow shooting from the darkness and slice into the whip, severing the tip. I move Natalie behind me.
“I won’t give her up without a fight,” I promise him.
“Good. I want it to be worth it.”
Kest sends shadows shooting at us from all angles. I shield Natalie with shadows of my own and teleport behind Kest, tackling him. He disappears before my fingers even graze his jacket. A rush of air warns me that he is attacking from behind and I dodge to the left and avoid his shadow; but his whip catches me across the back. It breaks skin but I ignore the painful stinging and teleport again. This time I appear in front of him, slashing at his chest. He backsteps and all I get his fabric. Pain blooms in my wrist and I look down to see shadows wrapped around it like a bracelet. They squeeze until my wrist shatters.
I ignore the pain and attack again, this time from below. I shoot up using the shadows from his shoes and knock him off his feet. I hold him down and pummel him with shadows. He blocks all but one and it severs the tendons in his shoulder. He grits his teeth below me.
“Enough,” he commands.
His shadows attack again and I teleport away to regain my breath. Natalie is still safe in the shadow bubble I placed around her. As long as I’m conscious, those shadows will remain strong.
“Why delay the inevitable, Jack?”
Across the circle he sheds his jacket, blood drips from his shoulder. Instead of answering I grab the nearest concrete slab with my shadows and lob it at him. He slices it in half with his own shadows.
“Neither of you are getting out of here alive.”
Softest Shadow Page 11