Shadow of the Past (27 page)

What she’d said to Steve wasn’t a lie.
She’d been in that situation before but this was the first time
that she had actively cheated on a guy that she still wanted to
stay with. All of the others she’d just used it as an easy way to
get out of something she didn’t want anything to do with
anymore.

Despite everything that had freaked her
out so much with Mark the last thing she wanted was an easy out.
Things with him were scary, insane and incredibly difficult but at
least he was genuine. Even if it was genuinely screwed
up.

And now she’d completely betrayed
him.

She could either try to pretend that
the whole thing hadn’t happened, but there’d be no way for her and
Steve to try to get along without Mark sensing that something had
happened. Of course, she could tell him everything, but that would
probably just destroy him.

It was a long, cold walk back to her
place and she couldn’t tell if she was chilled from the outside or
inside. She was able to remember the way home clearly enough. Of
course, she’d have to explain this to her folks, and since Ryan was
surely home by now he’d probably come up with some wildly lame and
believable excuse for where she was, which they would ask her about
and she’d have no way to follow through on. She was glad she’d left
her phone at home, doing so to give her an excuse for when her
parents (or Mark) asked where she was and why she hadn’t answered
any calls.

She was walking fast, her mind leaping
from one thing to the other so she didn’t even see the flashing
lights when she walked around the corner. It was only when a car
flew past her that she looked up and noticed them. Lots of flashing
lights. All different colors, all clearly coming from the same
place. Police, ambulance, and maybe even a fire truck or two. At
first her only thought was that maybe she should go around that
block so that she didn’t have to answer any questions about why she
was out so late, but then she realized that wouldn’t be
possible.

This was her cul-de-sac. She was
walking faster before she even realized it, and then she was
running as fast she could. As she got closer she could see there
were at least four police cars and two ambulances in the driveway,
and a fire truck pulled up on her lawn. When she got closer she
could hear the occasional chirp of a siren, radios crackling with
static, and her mother screaming.

After that, everything became a
blur.

Chapter
Twenty-Five

It took a couple of tries for Ryan to
get his key into the lock, but he finally got it to work. With an
agonizing slowness, he pushed the door open, straining his ears for
any noise coming from the house. He nodded to himself several
times, very enthusiastically. His entrance was a flawless
masterstroke of almost-sober coordination, and it confirmed his
status as a God among men. He stepped very slowly and deliberately
into the house. He tried to shut the door with the same amount of
quiet he had opened it with, but he slipped and the door slammed
closed much louder than he had intended it to.

Leaning against the wall for support,
he checked his watch and realized that it was only almost 1. He’d
decided to call off the movie, and instead found himself looking
for a decent bar in this god-forsaken suburban hell-hole. He’d
found one in the next town over, a blue collar dive bar with the
right combination of cheap beer and an atmosphere that assured you
that you’d be left alone.

He nursed beers until the few sober
bits in his head reminded him that he’d have to drive back home.
He’d waited until he could stand without wobbling over and then
drove very carefully back home. He thought it’d have taken him
longer, but apparently he was a better drunk driver than he gave
himself credit for.

He pushed off from the wall and headed
for the steps and his “guest room.” He’d taken everything he could
with him to college, knowing that his folks were going to move
again, but he’d expected that they’d at least put his stuff in a
room for him when he showed up. Oh no, not his folks. His stuff was
still in boxes in the basement. Behind a giant wall of other
boxes.

It was so nice to feel welcome in your
own home.

He started up the stairs, listing
against the rail as he tried his best to keep the noise to a
minimum. He’d made it a couple of steps up when he realized he
couldn’t see anything. He stopped, waving his hand in front of his
face and watching his arm disappear at the elbow in a blackness
that stretched everywhere in front of him. He looked over his
shoulder to make sure he’d hadn’t just gone blind, but everything
back there was how it should be.

He could feel his brain screeching to a
halt as panic drove the drunkenness from his mind and tried to
comprehend what he was seeing. He turned back to look up the stairs
when the fog of blackness completely enveloped him, not just
shutting off his vision completely, but filling his senses with the
stinging of burning ash.

He coughed but he could barely hear it,
like the black fog was sealing off his ears as well. He took an
unsteady step back, trying to find a way to negotiate the stairs,
blind, backwards and with limited sobriety. Just as he put an
exploratory foot back to find the next step, something touched his
chest and pushed him backwards with surprising force.

He tumbled back, one arm catching the
railing and slowing his fall some, but he still felt his ass crash
down on a step and then slide down two more before he tumbled out
of the senses-sapping darkness. Before him, the smoke fog had made
its way down the stairs, coalescing into a vaguely human
shape.

Ryan stumbled to his feet, his lower
back suddenly flaring in pain and his elbow buzzing likewise. There
was a long, drawn out scraping sound, and a thin line of brilliant
silver appeared in the midst of the fog. When the shrill, grinding
scrape finished, the man-shaped fog stopped at the bottom of the
steps and the line of silver was held aloft above it.

Ryan stared up at it, and then it
disappeared. There was a rush of wind past his face, and then a
flash of burning pain.

He cried out, putting a hand to his
suddenly wet cheek. It was blood, he realized, feeling it begin to
run down the side of his face.

The shape of the smoke-fog had
solidified more, with full arms and legs, and even a hat and long
cloak that stretched out curling smoky tendrils all across the
staircase. Under the brim of the hat, where eyes were supposed to
be, two pools of flame erupted with a silent explosion.

Ryan jerked back in surprise, and then
the blade reappeared, the tip not an inch from his nose and still
wet with his blood.

“So. You’re the brother.”

“Wha . . . what?” There was no mouth,
just the merest suggestion of one dimpled in the swirling
blackness.

“The girl. Where is she?”

“What?”

He didn’t even see the point of the
blade move. There was a blur and then a sting in his other cheek.
When it returned, the tip was wetter and redder.

“Where did she go?”

The tip of the blade was drawing
closer, and Ryan took a step back, hypnotized by the sight of his
own blood dripping onto the floor of his parents prized new
home.

“Are you in there, or am I just talking
to myself?”

It wasn’t until that moment that he
realized who this thing had been talking about, and the pain his
cheeks was forgotten. He opened his mouth to make a threat of his
own, but he was interrupted by a call from the top of the
steps.

“Ryan? Chrissy? Is that you
two?”

His father was in his pajamas and
bathrobe, hair askew on his head, and had taken a few steps down
the stairs until he realized what he was seeing was most certainly
not the kids sneaking in after curfew that he expected.

“What is going on here?” Harold Baker
said, his voice trembling with terrified indignation.

“Oh, be quiet,” the figure snarled.
“I’ll be with you in a moment.” It spun around, launching the blade
at Harold Baker and impaling him in the leg. With a yell of
surprise and pain, the elder Baker tumbled down the stairs, landing
in a pile at the feet of the Shadow Man.

“The girl,” he asked Ryan again. “Where
is she?”

Ryan darted forward, the pain in his
face and back forgotten at the sight of his father lying in a heap
with a sword sticking out from his leg. He didn’t make it a step
before something smashed into his face and then again on the other
side, sending him down to his knees.

“I’m not screwing around,”
the Shadow Man said. “Tell me where the girl is and I
might
let you and your
father live. Keep being a moron and I’ll kill you, your father,
your mother, and when I’m done I’ll
really
hurt the girl.”

“I don’t know! She was supposed to be
here, I don’t know where she is, I swear!” Ryan said, head now
swimming from pain instead of liquor.

The Shadow Man stared at him with his
flaming eyes for a moment, the only noise his father’s moaning
behind him.

“I’m not convinced. Maybe watching
Daddy suffer will jog your memory.” He turned, pulling his father
upright and leaning him against the wall next to the stairs. He
reached down and pulled the blade from his leg, drawing a fresh
yell of pain out of him.

“Motherfucker!” Ryan charged at the
figure’s back. There was a rustle like cloth and the darkness
swirled around him as the figure sidestepped him, and then there
was a sharp, piercing pain right above his heel. The leg seemed to
go dead underneath him, dropping him down to his knee. He looked
up, now at eye level with his father, and suddenly there was an
incredible pressure on the back of his neck, and it felt like every
sensation in his body left him. He opened his mouth to say
something, but he wasn’t getting any air.

And then he was gone.

“Isn’t that touching,” the Shadow Man
said, pulling the blade from the back of Ryan’s neck. The body
dropped down at his father’s feet. Blood sprayed onto the floor,
but flowed around the Shadow Man’s feet, leaving him
untouched.

“Still awake?” he said, leaning down
and snapping his fingers impatiently in front of Harold Baker’s
face. The eyes focused, and then widened in horror as he saw his
son laying prone in front of him, his blood flowing all over the
floor. Harold looked up, his face ashen and mouth gaping open and
shut.

“Good,” the Shadow man said, placing
the tip of his blade just below Harold’s breastbone and using just
enough pressure to keep him in place, but more than enough to make
a small stain of blood appear in the center of his expensive
pajamas. “I didn’t hit any of the major arteries in your leg, so
you won’t bleed to death for a while. All I want to know is where
your girl is? Do you know, or as you as clueless as your other
offspring?”

The father was just gaping at him, his
eyes blank, stunned and filling with tears. “You’re utterly
useless, aren’t you?” the Shadow Man said, and then pushed the
blade through muscle until it hit drywall. Baker gaped even more,
and the tears (and blood) flowed freely now. The Shadow Man
withdrew the blade with a flourish, snapping it back home in its
sheath, covered with fresh tribute for his Lord.

“I’ve called the police,” came a
strangled cry from up stairs.

“Good for you,” he said, watching the
elder Baker slump down to one side, his breath coming faster and
more shallow. He turned on his heel and headed for the kitchen.
“I’ll let myself out,” he said.

As he passed through the kitchen
towards the back door, he drew in a deep breath and exhaled a long
strand of fire, covering the counter and fancy technological
doo-dads. They hissed and melted, the fire quickly spreading up the
fancy window curtains and wall

The porch door opened for him and he
strode through as the fire roared behind him. His power was
growing, and he could feel more of his Lord’s righteous fury
boiling through him with every drop of blood he brought back to
Him. He jumped from the balcony just as the electric widgets and
kitchen appliances exploded behind him, shattering the fancy,
opulent windows behind him.

But before he could deliver his latest
tribute, even if it wasn’t what he had intended, he had one more
stop to make.

Jack was cold. He tried to roll over
and wrap more blankets around himself, but his body was pinned to
the bed. He tried again, and felt his breath being slowly squeezed
out of his chest. Panicking, his eyes fluttered open, and he met
the gaze of the two pools of flame peering down at him.

“Hush now, we don’t want to wake
Daddy,” the Shadow Man said, his voice low and rumbling. Jack
didn’t think he could make any noise if he tried. The Shadow Man
was straddled on top of him, his weight pressing down on Jack. One
of his hands was right next to his head, and the other held a long,
silver blade pressed against Jack’s throat. Behind him, darkness
swirled angrily, almost completely blotting out the rest of the
room.

“We had an agreement,” the Shadow Man
said, pressing the blade closer to Jack’s neck. “You’re useful, but
only if you can follow instructions. If you can’t, that makes you a
problem. Maybe I should just end you right now.”