The Darkness of Shadows Read online

  “No, I’m serious! We’re at Mr. Young’s house. Your father’s here.”

  My heart stopped. “I’m calling the police. Hang on.”

  “He said you have to come alone … no police—”

  A real scream flowed over the line, then silence.

  I dialed Val’s number—it went straight to voice mail. Crap! I tried once more, same thing.

  Tina calling me, no police … sounded hinky, but I couldn’t reach Val. Something must be wrong. I turned around and headed for Upper Montclair. I had no plan as to what I was going to do. Do I knock on the door and say, “Hey, do you have my best friend and her snarky little sister in there? Please let them go?”

  My mind kept telling me to call the police, but Tina’s scared whispers told me no.

  I pulled into the driveway and parked next to Val’s car. This was not good. I couldn’t sneak around to check things out, so I went for the direct approach, the front door. I had my pistol down to my side, the safety off, and was about to ring the bell, but the door was ajar.

  This is the part in the movie where Val and I yell at the stupid girl to turn around and run like hell.

  Yeah, well, in I walked, my cane announcing my arrival.

  I stopped and listened. Faint voices were down the next hall.

  “Look, she’s here. Just like I told you she would be.” Tina’s voice was calm, nothing like the flurried conversation of minutes ago. “I did my part. You need to keep her away from my family.”

  Silence answered.

  “Well?” Tina said.

  “You’re right,” my father said. “We made a deal and you delivered. Even gave me a bonus.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tina’s voice was getting higher.

  “Your sister followed you here.”

  “She wasn’t part of the deal,” Tina said.

  My father laughed. “You can go or your sister can. Which will it be?”

  Tina hustled out of the room and straight into me. I shouldered her into the wall. Her eyes, stained with hate, met mine.

  “This is all because of you!” she said.

  Where’ve I heard that before?

  “Call the police,” I said.

  She shoved me back and hurried towards her freedom.

  “Natalie, we’re waiting for you,” my father said. His impatient words stoked my growing fear.

  I started to sweat. I wanted to run, but couldn’t. Val was in trouble. Walter too. I hoped some scathingly brilliant idea would come to me.

  It didn’t.

  I entered the room Tina just vacated.

  A quick reconnaissance of the space left me with the distinct feeling I was totally fucked.

  My father was standing at the bay window. Walter, in his white outfit, hopped from one foot to the other, smiling. An accessory before, during, and after the fact—how could I have been so stupid? Val would never let me live this one down—if we got out of here.

  Goths stood on either side of Val, their hands clamped on her arms, holding her upright. She moaned as her head lolled forward, her clothes dotted with blood.

  “What did you do to her, you son of a bitch?” I said.

  My father shook his head. “It was a tactical move by the gentlemen.”

  I stopped a few feet in front of Val and dropped my cane. Making sure the safety was off, I held the pistol in a two-handed grip and pointed it at the first Goth.

  “Get the hell away from her or I will kill you.”

  The knife in his free hand shifted a hair closer to Val’s throat. I pulled the trigger twice.

  He dropped where he stood, two holes in his heart. Green slime oozed from the wounds. The other one let go of Val’s arm and she sideslipped to the floor. He went to Walter and my father.

  “Get back over there,” Walter said to the Goth. “Don’t let them—”

  Keeping my eyes on the faction by the window, I leaned down next to Val.

  “Hey, we need to go.”

  “Where’s Tina?”

  “Gone. Can you move? We need to get out of here.” I didn’t wait for an answer as I pulled her up.

  “Isn’t that a picture?” my father said. “Those girls have been friends since they were twelve years old.”

  Walter just nodded, still hopping back and forth.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” my father said.

  “Away from you, you bastard,” I said.

  The Goth was on the move and I braced for a collision. Whatever surrounded Val and me stopped him cold, but I lost my balance and sent us crashing to the floor. Val slid away.

  I tried to sit up and was met with a sharp kick to my stomach that sent me right back to the floor, doubled over. Walter took the pistol out of my hand.

  “You’ve made things more difficult than they needed to be.” His white leather espadrille connected with my head, sending me into unawareness.

  Where the hell was I? My head hurt, my stomach too. I was on a cold tile floor in a small, white room. Shit! I was in Walter’s house! I saw legs passing me, then passing me again. My father was circling me.

  “Valerie’s quite lovely,” he said. “Takes after her mother.”

  He pushed Walter aside and knelt next to Val, started whispering to her. I recognized his tone. He was telling her what he was going to do to her.

  I struggled to my feet, no cane to aid me. Anger rose in my voice like the heat off the pavement after a summer rain storm.

  “Leave her alone.”

  He glanced back to me. “Or what? What can you possibly do?” He stood up and walked toward me. “I haven’t forgotten the way you spoke to me at your apartment.”

  I said nothing, just kept looking forward.

  “Did you hear me?” His fist slammed into my side, knocking my breath from me. “We raised you better than that.”

  Still I said nothing as I straightened from the punch.

  “I think you know where this is going.” He continued his journey around me.

  “Yes, I was rude.” I couldn’t let him near Val again.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, sir, I was rude to you at the apartment. And I’m sorry.” My head went down out of habit formed long ago.

  “Better.” He stopped circling. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  I threw up in my mouth a little but managed to swallow it back down. Just breathe.

  “Leave her alone!” Val said. She was leaning against the wall, two new Goths on either side of her.

  “Val, run!” I said.

  My father shook his head.

  “Come now, it’s time to work.” He pointed to the table.

  “Sir, I never asked you or Mom for anything.” I continued to look down. “Please let Val go.”

  A backhanded blow sent me to the ground.

  I lay on the floor, unable to think.

  “You son of a bitch!” Val said.

  “You haven’t earned the right to call your mother anything but ma’am,” my father said.

  Somehow I got up, swaying as I stood.

  “Sir, I’m sorry I disrespected you. I’m sorry I disrespected her.”

  He smiled. “Tell her yourself.”

  From the hallway, my mother made an entrance that would have made Bette Davis proud: blond hair flowing, blue eyes burning bright, wearing a gorgeous black evening gown.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  She walked to us and stood in front of me, looking me up and down. She reached a hand out as if to touch my face in greeting and slapped me instead.

  “How dare you look at me without my permission!”

  For a dead person she was pretty strong.

  “Sorry for disrespecting you, ma’am.” I was having trouble breathing, my head spinning. I chanced a look at Val. She was watching our macabre family reunion in horror. Walter stood behind her, holding my pistol to her head, while the Goths kept close to her sides.

  “We’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to show you w
hat I’ve been up to.” My father took my mother’s arm and pointed at me. “You too.”

  A leather-bound book was open and waiting on a side table. He flipped through the pages. Press clippings about the Dragon Slayer were arranged in chronological order, and with each article were pictures of his victims. Not from the papers, but original photographs of my father and the women he murdered. I wondered who’d taken them—then I saw Walter, proud grin on his face.

  Guess that answered that question.

  “We have work to do,” my mother said. She stopped at the tray that held the surgical gowns, the knives for my father, and her tools of the trade. She nodded her approval as she picked up the pencil torch.

  My father pushed me toward the table.

  “Walter, bring Valerie over here so she can see.”

  Once again, I lay face down on a table, naked from the waist up, my parents chatting back and forth as if over coffee, discussing their plans to finish their work. Their fingers traced the lines of the scars they created so many years ago, revisiting past triumphs. Now, with one last sequence, one last sigil or rune or dragon, they’d be done. Ready to share their special magic with the rest of the world.

  Time meant nothing as they pored over copies of the last pages of the grimoire. Pages I thought I’d burned and destroyed forever. The room was silent but for their murmured conversation.

  The pain was as I remembered it: the blades slicing into my back, the rivulets of blood flowing down my sides, the searing of the cuts, the stench of burning flesh.

  There’s a point when you don’t feel pain anymore. When white collides with black and gray is created. When your senses are blissfully severed from reality.

  My parents stopped a millisecond before I reached that destination.

  They paused to study the drawings, discuss the proper angle and placement of an image, to sharpen a tool.

  The only difference between then and now was that Val was watching my parents’ perversions. The dismantling of my sanity was absolute.

  “We’re finished,” my mother said.

  I lay motionless. Their magnum opus was complete.

  “William, I want to speak to her alone.”

  “Certainly.” He threw a zippered sweatshirt at me. “Put this on. Your mother will speak to you in the living room. Walter, clean up this mess, will you?”

  He strode out of the room.

  “Can you sit up?” Val’s voice was close by. The rough cloth of the sweatshirt floated onto my arms and body. Her fingers trembled as she zipped it closed.

  “Thanks,” I said. She touched my face and I shied away. “Please don’t.”

  “It’s just me, Nat.” Her voice small.

  I nodded as I rocked toward insanity. “You have to get out of here.” My eyes went to Walter and the Goths. “You can kick his ass, and theirs too. Please, go.”

  “Not without you.”

  We made our way to the wall nearest the door.

  “Girls, I wouldn’t try anything,” Walter said. My pistol was in his waistband.

  “Mr. Young, why are you doing this?” Val said.

  He stopped cleaning. “Most things in life are about money. And when Karen comes back, there’ll be no stopping us.”

  “She was right there,” Val said.

  I listened through closed eyes, trying to think.

  “What you just saw is a doppelganger.” He made a dismissive gesture. “William created her to help him with the ritual. Then her purpose is complete.”

  “Fucking freaks, all of them,” Val said.

  More Goths appeared in the doorway to escort us to our next destination, the living room. They pointed for me to go in.

  “Now that the girls are separated, don’t let them within three feet of each other,” Walter said. “Do you understand? Tell the others as well. These are William’s direct orders.”

  “William gave us the gift to walk under the sun, and we will honor his wishes,” the tall Goth said, “but she’s a mixed breed. Surely—”

  “That’s no concern of yours,” Walter said. “There can be no more mistakes.”

  The Goths nodded and pressed their knives to Val’s throat as the door closed.

  My mother was waiting by the bar with a drink in her hand. My first thoughts were of violence, but I could barely stand, let alone throw a punch.

  “You owe me nothing, I know that,” she said as I dared to stare into her eyes. “My world was always self-contained misery.”

  “Wait, let me get a tissue. And just as a sidebar, I don’t even know what you are. I watched you die. You can’t be real.” I leaned on the bar for support.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I am a creation of your father’s. Some of your mother is in me—just enough to bring the true Karen back.”

  “If any part of my mother was really in you, you know she’d never go against my father.”

  “William murdered me.” She pushed a bottle of water at me. “In more ways than one.”

  I eyed her and took a bottle from the other side of the ice bucket. I struggled, got the top off, then took a long pull.

  “Smart,” she said. “The prison of time has made things very clear to me. I need to be free of William and you’re the only one that can do it. I thought I loved him …”

  “But you never loved me,” I said.

  She stared at me. “You were … a means to an end.”

  I let that truth cut into my already shredded psyche.

  “What did he promise you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My father must have offered you something,” I said. “Wealth. Eternal life. What was it?”

  Her eyes went to the drink. “Power.”

  “Did the Guerreros know what you did to me?”

  “God, no!” She shook her head. “Rita would’ve killed us both. She begged me to give you to her.” She sipped. “You need to kill your father.”

  “Sure, then you and I can catch up on things.” I swayed from the anguish surrounding me.

  “Just listen,” my mother said. “I created a sigil only I can call. It’s one of the reasons your father needed me.”

  “So?”

  “So your function is to serve as the permanent altar for the ritual,” she said. “At the end of every performance, you’ll be healed—to be used again, and again, and again.”

  Who knew my parents were into recycling?

  “I’m not a normal preternatural.” If there was such a thing. “What am I? Really?”

  “William and I combined our gifts in you.” She shrugged. “You’re a chimera.”

  How nice for me. Couldn’t be something cool, like a unicorn or a mermaid. Nope, had to be one with the head of a lion and a serpent’s tail. How attractive.

  “So I’m a preternatural cocktail that brings the long-dead back to life,” I said. “Bringing you wealth and power and all that great stuff. Remind me why you want to kill my father?”

  “It’s the only way I can be free,” she said, “and you too.”

  Was my mother really pissed enough to disrupt his plans? I would be. But lies were like breathing for her.

  I finally had a bargaining chip. “I’ll only help if you get Val out of here.”

  “She’s your Protector, she’ll never leave you.” She shook her head. “At a certain point, I will signal you, and you must interrupt the ritual. If this works, your father will be weakened. Then you must kill him.”

  “How many drinks have you had?” I said. “He’s insanely strong. I don’t have my pistol. I’ve got nothing.”

  She looked me dead in my eyes. “You are stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. No matter what we did to you, you never broke. You have your mind and your hands—it’s all you’ve ever needed.”

  Sanity breaks before the fall.

  “I came into this house uninvited. I don’t have any supernatural help here.”

  “You won’t need it,” she said.

  “You’re crazy.”

  �
�After the ritual, there will be residual energies trapped in your body. If you died, they would dissipate naturally, but you will be healed. You need to harness them, control and release them.”

  I couldn’t believe I was asking. “How?”

  “You’ll know what to do.” She stared at the glass. “This has to work. For both our sakes.”

  Doing what she asked wouldn’t make her love me. She was incapable of affection. It would give her what she wanted—revenge and peace. The same things I wanted. But if I accomplished this impossible task it would open up a can of William Gannon whoop-ass on me and Val.

  “I’ll know what to do? Interrupt the ritual? Harness my powers?” I glared at her. “For once in your fucking life, help me!”

  She closed her eyes. “You need to—”

  A knock on the door.

  “Karen, its time,” Walter said.

  The Goths led us into another room—white, of course. In the center of the floor was a circle, carved into the tile, embellished with runes and sigils and creatures—a lot like what was on my back. Four shallow channels ran around the outer edge, then swerved to the center and emptied into a circular indentation. Four stakes came out of the marble at four corners of the circle.

  Clear chairs were set up against the far wall, away from the only door. There were no windows, only a huge piece of circular glass in the ceiling, letting the moonlight through.

  “Val, you have to get the hell out of here now!” I struggled against my captors.

  Four Goths restrained her. “Not without you.”

  My parents breezed in, followed by Walter.

  “You know, Valerie,” my father said, “Augustina has quite the mean streak. Greedy too—plotting and planning to eliminate Natalie from your lives, and attaching a price tag to all of it.”

  “My sister helped you with all of this?” Val said.

  “I couldn’t have done it without her. She helped search for the missing pages. And when we thought they were gone forever, she contacted me again, offering copies of my missing work. Copies I believe she stole from you.”

  My mother was still, inspecting the room.

  “Rita’s magic is very strong, even after all those years of not practicing,” he said. “If it wasn’t for her interfering, I would’ve gotten Natalie here weeks ago. Healing such a serious stomach wound was impressive. And gathering the other Healers when Augustina switched the medications? She’s sly, that one.”