Hunting Shadows (Shadow Series #3) (8 page)

Chapter Six

Something was wrong. I could feel it in every fiber of my being and I struggled to
open my eyes. Shafts of moonlight
illuminated the room
and I shifted so that I was facing Simon.
His eyes were closed,
h
is breathing
deep and even, and I watched him for a few moments before turning back around. I quickly
scanned the room, looking for anything out of place, but everything seemed normal.
It was silent except for the soft sounds of Simon’s breathing and I checked the time
on the alarm clock.
It was almost two o’clock in the morning and I wondered why Ryan hadn’t woken me
up so that I could take my shift in watching Grant.

I sat up slowly, being careful not to jostle Simon so that he could get some much
needed sleep. His eyes remained closed and his breathing even, so I slipped out of
bed and quietly opened the bedroom door, closing it behind me.
I softly padded to Sarah’s room and opened the door
, surprised to find Ryan absent. Sarah and Grant were both fast asleep, and I felt
a surge of anger towards Ryan for leaving them unprotected.

I kept her bedroom door open so that I could hear if anything happened and walked
to the living room
, expecting to see Ryan asleep
on the couch.
My s
tomach dropped when I saw him l
ying on the floor, his limbs at awkward angles with a pool of blood rapidly growing
underneath him.

“Ryan!” I ran over
and kneeled
beside him
, terror gripping
me as his eyes
fluttered open. His eyes looked glazed and bewildered, full of pain and confusion.

“What happened?
Who did this to you?
” I sobbed as I frantically tried to determine the source of the blood. It seemed
to be coming from the back of his head and I made a movement
to jump up so that I could get
my phone to call an ambulance. I gasped when Ryan grabbed my arm, his grip much stronger
than I thought he could manage in his condition.

“Wait,” he rasped, his voice barely audible.

“I have to call 9-1-1!” I exclaimed, trying to wrigg
le my arm free. “You need to go
to the hospital!”

Ryan winced as he tried to lift his head, and to my horror I saw the pool of blood
growing quickly, almost unnaturally so, and it s
oon surrounded me, soaking my pajama bottoms
where
I was kneeling. I had to force back
a surge of nausea and
suppress
the instinct to scuttle back to avoid his blood. Now wasn’t the time to be squeamish.

“I have to tell you before it’s too late,” he p
ersisted. He took a breath and I
heard an ominous rattling sound from his airways. “
It’s not where you think it is.”

“What are you talking about?”
I frantically searched the room, praying that whoever had attacked him wasn’t lying
in wait. Ryan’s
hand was still around my arm in a manacle grip, not allowing me to do the one thing
I was desperate to do: call an ambulance.

“The answers you need. It’s not where you think it is.
It’s not with who
you think it is. Don’t trust the untrustworthy
, even if it’s you
.”

“Ryan, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I wondered if he was delusional because
of his injuries, and I almost sobbed with relief when I was able to get my arm free
from his grasp. I jumped up and ran to my bedroom to get my cell phone, trying to
ignore the blood
dropping from my sopping pants that left
a crimson trail on the floor.

“Simon!” I yelled as I grabbed my phone from the nightstand.
He was still fast asleep in bed.
“I need your help! Ryan’s been hurt!”

I didn’t wait to see if Simon roused as I raced back into the living room. I ski
dded to a dead halt, my eyes frantically searching the floor,
disbelief coursing through me when I saw that Ryan was nowhere to be found. Not only
that, there was no blood in sight, nothing to indicate that I hadn’t just left him
bloody and injured on the floor.

My
heart start
ed thudding against my ribcage as I looked down, expecting to see a mess where my
pajama bottoms were soaked with blood, but they were pristine
without a drop of crimson on them
.

“It can’t be…” I whispered to myself. I glanced behind me but there was no trail of
blood, nothing to indicate what I had just witnessed. From where I was standing, I
could see straight into the open doorway of Sarah’s room, a
nd I froze when I saw that her
bed was empty.
Had someone come in and abducted Ryan, along with Sarah and Grant, while I went to
get my phone? How
w
as that possible in a matter of seconds?

I ran back to my bedroom, desperate for Simon’s help. A terrified cry escaped me when
I saw
that
my bed was also empty. I was all
alone. Everyone had disappeared and
I was all alone.

I gasped as I woke up, my heart beating erratically as I tried to
get a hold of my surroundings. My quickened pulse began to calm when I realized it
had
only
been a dream. I could feel the warmth of Simon
’s body
against my back and I glanced at the alarm clock, noting that it was almost two a.m.
As the thought of why Ryan had
n’t
woken me to take my shift crossed my mind, a chill
ran through my body
.
I pushed aside the thought that reality was mirroring my dream and slowly slipped
out of bed, careful not to wake Simon. There
was no reason to wake him because of a dream, even though
I was now fearful of seeing
it
play out in real life. It was paranoia, nothing else.

Nevertheless, a feeling of
dread came over me as I mimicked
the movements of my dream. I
closed
the
bedroom door behind me before
walking over to Sarah’
s
room. I held my breath as I slowly opened the door
,
trepidation making my heart beat so loudly that it was all I could hear.

Relief rushed through me when I saw Ryan look up from the chair he was sitting in
by Sarah’s desk.
I crept inside and shut the door behind me, glancing at Sarah and Grant who were
asleep in bed.

“Why did
n’t
you wake
me
up?” I whispered as I walked closer
to him
, carefu
l to keep my voice quiet
to not disturb
Sarah and Grant.

“I wasn’t tired,” he replied, matching the quietness of my voice. “You didn’t get
any sleep last night, and I figured you needed as much rest as you could get.”

“Thanks, but I’m awake now. You can go to bed.” I sat down on the beanbag chair, settling
in and getting comfortable since I would be there for a few hours.

Ryan shrugged. “Like I said, I’m not tired. I’ll stay with you for a while.”

I didn’t protest. The last thing I wanted after my dream was to be alone. It was comforting
to have Ryan nearby
;
to know that he wasn’t lying in a pool of blood and that just because I had a horrible
dream didn’t mean it was prophetic.
My dreams of my mother had been a warning about the car accident Simon and I were
in, not a prediction that I would see her corpse come to life. Likewise, I needed
to stop thinking of my dream in such a literal sense.

We didn’t speak for a while and I was the one to first break the silence.

“I had a dream,” I said softly, glancing at the bed to make sure I wasn’t loud enough
to disturb Grant and Sarah.

“Do you want to tell me
about it
?” Ryan asked gently. I appreciated him as
king instead of just d
emanding that I
tell him about i
t
. I was surprised that I was even confiding in him, but he had been a pivotal part
of my dream and maybe he could help me shed some light on it.

Ryan was silent while I told him the details of my dream, seemingly unfazed when I
told him about finding him injured on the floor.
It was nice to not have someone gasp in horror when I
spoke about the
gruesome
things I saw
in my sleep. Ryan took it in stride and I remi
nded myself that he was
witness to the same kind of horrors
at
night.

“What do you think it means?” I asked when I was done recounting the dream.

“It’s hard to tell. Dreams tend to be so cry
ptic that it’s often hard to understand
what they mean until after the fact.” Ryan thought for a few moments before continuing.
“In the dream,
I told you that
the answ
er
s aren’t where you think they are
.
That they’re not with who you think they are
. It’s warning you not to trust
those that are untrustworthy
.”

“Even if it’s me,” I said, parroting the
words from my dream. Those
words filled me with tr
epidation. What did it
mean? If I couldn’t even trust myself, who could I trust?

“I wouldn’t take the words literally. I think it’s just a warning to not trust those
around you without good reason. That you need to be careful.”

I
know who
Ryan
was referencing as
untrustworthy but I didn’t want to start an argument about Simon so I stayed silent.
I was relieved when he didn’t push it. I kept mu
lling over my dream until I felt the beginnings of
a headache.
I looked up to find Ryan watching me, and for some reason it made me flush.

“Do you have dreams
often
too?” I asked, grasping for something to say.

Ryan s
hook his head. “No, only every once in a while
. But I’ve heard of other seers having
them more frequently. They’re usually meant to convey a message but the difficulty
is trying to decipher the message before it’s too late.”

I was distracted
by
a glint of metal
at Ryan’s neck
and leaned forward to get a closer look. A small medallion was hanging by a short
chain around his neck.

“Is that iridium?” I asked.

He n
odded as he reached up to touch
it. “It was my mother’s.”

“Do your parents still live in Seattle?” I was curious about Ryan’s personal life
but had been too consumed with everything going on around us to delve into it.

“No, my parents passed away a while ago.” He said it matter-of-factly, but I instantly
felt remorse at my nosiness.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”

He didn’t volunteer any more information and despite wanting to know how his parents
had
pa
ssed away, the last thing I
was going
to do was pry
.
Neither of us spoke for a while
.

“How much do you know about palladium?” Ryan’s voice startled me, even t
hough it was low and quiet
.

“Not much, besides the fact that it makes iridium pretty much null and void
, as well as seers’ powers
. Vardogers are able to overtake seers while wearing it and pretty much makes them
impossible to destroy.” I hesitated before continuing. “I don’t know if Marie told
you
that
it works a little differently for me. I have to actually be touching the palladium
for it to make
me powerless. I’ve been able to destroy vardogers
that have been wearing palladium
.”

For some reason, telling Ryan this made me feel a little vulnerable. I wasn’t sure
if I should hold my cards a little closer instead of telling him everything, but he
just nodded
as if he wasn’t surprised by what I had revealed
. “Marie told me. It’s
what
convinced your father even more that you hold the key to their immortality.”

“Is there anything else I need to know about it?”

“I don’t know much more than you,” Ryan answered. “As you know, it’s not just any
type of palladium, but a special type that holds these powers.”

“Palladium that reflects shadows,” I said in a hushed tone.