Shadowhunter (Nephilim Quest Book 1) (28 page)

"We're going to the very back, there." Grandma pointed to the dark end of the alley. "Any shadow that appears will position itself right behind those rubbish bins, where it has a better view of the bar door."

Daniel appeared out of thin air in front of us. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

"How did you do that? Do you have one of the Keys?"

"One can always step down from the buffer zone to one's real living environment, without the use of Keys. That's how the disappeared ones in the stories just suddenly appeared back in their own world, and into a different time without knowing how they returned," Grandma explained. "It's the going back to the buffer zone that requires the Keys or an existing gate. But the Nephilim can go both ways without Keys. The wings seem to create a vibration that opens a portal away from the physical world."

I remembered how Daniel's wings had appeared and the slight bending of the air on their outer edges. It resembled something floating on water - too light to sink into it, but solid enough to bend the surface of the water.

We moved silently into the shadows of the alley, behind some boxes that had been stacked untidily on top of each other.
 

"Now we need to be totally quiet. I'll touch your hand when a shadow appears – if it appears. Look then on this side of the rubbish bins and see if you can spot it," whispered Grandma.

We stood there, without moving. I tried not to pay attention to the bad smell around us. It seemed that someone had dumped garbage bags down the alley and it stank as though something had been rotting there for a considerable time. I did not want to know what it was. The little noises that I heard suggested we were probably accompanied by rats. Delightful.
 

As time ticked by, I had to move my body weight slightly from one leg to the other every once in a while, but Daniel stood like a tall statue by my side seemingly without any discomfort. I could not ignore his presence – I could feel his body heat on the right side of my body, while my left side was cold. He was totally quiet, but somehow I sensed he felt awkward standing next to me. If I could have done, I would have apologized for hurting his wings, but we had to stay quiet.

If anyone had told me some weeks earlier that I would find myself in a back alley next to an angel (well, half an angel, I suppose), chasing shadows that were created by individuals who called themselves Immortals, and who lived in a strange buffer zone around our world... where you could meet the dearly departed... or if I had been told earlier that vampires were real... I think I would have voluntarily committed myself for treatment. Now, however, I had visited the buffer zone, seen gateways to it, met my dead friend for an all too brief moment, talked with someone who descended from angels, discovered my grandmother was a Huntress of shadows...

I decided I'd better accept it all, and not think too much about it, or I would really go crazy. The evidence of it all being true was overwhelming so there was no point in fighting it. Maybe my brain would find a way to make it all feel natural to me, given time. How much time though?
 

We must have stood there for an hour. I found a balanced posture - feet slightly apart, with knees ever so slightly bent. Still, my feet were getting really tired in my light tennis shoes, when suddenly there was movement by the trash bin.  The darkness seemed to concentrate more, and suddenly there was a form there.
 

Grandma was standing close to me and only needed to move her little finger to touch my hand, but I could not nod, because the shadow might see the movement. I could see it very clearly now. To me it looked like some sort of werewolf, only more fluid, and not so angled as you would expect a wolf to look. Its profile showed a canine muzzle, but human forehead and the ears...they were sort of human and animal at once. If you've never considered ears to be frightening, believe me, these were.
 
I had to close my eyes when panic hit me again.
 
White flashes exploded in the darkness of my eyes, like fireworks on the closed lids. Was I going to pass out? I remembered seeing this kind of a monster as a child. I had to control myself.
 
I told myself that if I moved, the shadow would turn and see me. Bile rose into my mouth from sheer horror.

Right then the door to the bar across the street opened and a drunken man tottered out onto the sidewalk. He was trying to light a cigarette and migrated hand over hand, picket-fence-style towards the alley, clicking on his lighter, which refused to cooperate. An angry driver blew his horn as he drove past, but the man was so drunk he just waved his hand dismissively, barely noticing the vehicle.

The shadow rose from its hiding place and stepped in front of the man. He sensed something there and tried to focus in front of him with narrowed, bleary eyes. Suddenly the shadow turned darker and more solid. The cigarette fell from the man's lips and his mouth opened. He was too shocked to speak.

I had never expected to be able see the energy-stealing thing with my own eyes, because I had never witnessed energy as such, not in the way people talked about auras and stuff, but now I could see the man's energy quite clearly. It just shot out from his stomach area, like a fountain. The shadow grabbed it with its... hands. They were more like paws, but they moved as though there were no bones in them, more like...like... tentacles. The creature's hands started rolling the energy into a ball just as if it was preparing a ball of yarn for knitting. The horrified man fell onto his knees because of the strength of the pulling. It was hideous - this strange effect of an almost recognizably domestic movement of yarn rolling, along with something that was akin to evisceration.
 

Daniel shot into motion in the blink of an eye and arrived at the scene like an arrow from a bow.  He raised his hand. The shadow was concentrating so hard on reeling in the man's energy that it did not have time to react. Daniel's hand rose and fell like a whip at the back of the shadow's neck. I saw a greyish flash, and the shadow fell on its face on the street. The energy it was holding in its arms rolled onto the ground and started slowly withdrawing back towards the pancreatic area of the drunken man who was kneeling and moaning on the sidewalk.

The shadow began to lose its form. For a while it crawled about on the ground aimlessly, shaking, with its movements growing ever more feeble. Then finally all movement ceased and it began to decrease in size.
 
It crumpled in on itself like a piece of cloth.

Grandma walked to the man and helped him to get up onto his feet.

"You should not drink so much, young man!" She
 
managed a proper grandma-voice, which contradicted her youthful appearance. "Your body can only take so much abuse!"

"N...no... Thank you.. Did - did - you see it...?" the man's face was grey with shock and he looked wildly around him.

"See what?" Grandma asked kindly.

"The monster..." he whispered.

"There are no monsters here." Grandma's
 
tone allowed no objections. "If you have begun to see pink elephants, I suggest you stop drinking. Or else you might end up with hallucinations for the rest of your life!"

The man breathed a few deep breaths, still looking ill.

"Do you need a taxi?" Grandma asked.

"No, thank you, I think I'd be better walking to clear my head," the man said weakly and turned his back on us. He took a few feeble steps, and began to walk away as fast as his drunken state would allow. He seemed to be sobering up quickly.

"Follow him, just in case," Grandma nudged Daniel, "there may be other shadows around."

The man disappeared round the corner of the block, Daniel walking after him at a discreet distance. I noticed a little card on the ground where the man had fallen, and lifted it up.

"Fortune telling. Messages from the other side. Angel consultation," the card said.

I turned it around. "Kitty's Divinations" was printed under a picture of a cat staring at a crystal ball.

I slid it into my pocket. 

Wind took the remains of the shadow and scattered them in a fine dust along the street.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

38. Letters to the Moon

The Hunter did not socialise much with anyone. He felt the weight of centuries on his shoulders, and intellectually the younger Hunters seemed to be like children. Well, they were, compared to him. Some were children he had made himself, to keep the bloodline alive, so that she would never be forgotten and would live on in her children of the night, until he could find a way to get her back.

Sometimes he left the shadow world and traveled back to where he had met her so very long ago, especially when he needed to be alone. He was allowed to do so, because of his long years of service to the Masters. His shadow servant kept up surveillance while the Hunter was gone and alerted him if he was needed.

Tonight the Masters had set the trap successfully. His shadow had observed the whole thing from the rooftop above the alley. It had sent a message to ask if it should try to get the girl once the trap was sprung, but the Hunter said no. He did not want to lose his faithful servant, even though he was prepared to make a new shadow, if this one was killed. Their Huntress, the woman, was too dangerous. He had seen her fight. And the Nephilim they had with them was so powerful the shadow would not have had a chance. No, they must wait for the girl to come to them, alone, and be ready when she did.

After the night's work, he had withdrawn into the buffer zone and travelled along its paths to his own private place in the human world. It was a high cliff in the middle of a wilderness, where it was not likely he would meet humans and be tempted by them. Here he sat like a statue, free of his enveloping cloak and hood. His pale golden skin was colder than the night air. His shiny black hair fell onto his shoulders as he sat motionless under the vast black sky and watched the moon in its orbit. He knew its movements by heart and was keenly aware of the time and place of its rising and setting.
 

With him he had pieces of paper, and blood that he had taken from a bird he had killed. When he finally moved, it was to write to her with the blood, using a quill from his kill just as he used to do. He dipped the tip of the quill into the little glass bottle containing the blood. The blood did not shimmer with life as it had in the distant past, when she was there to read his notes. It was not the right kind, of course...

But he wrote to her nevertheless, careful not to tear the delicate paper, telling her through his writing how much he still loved her.
 
The whole ritual was a pitiful imitation of the days he had written to keep her to himself. He knew this, but he could not stop. No one knew of his letters, so no one could ridicule him. And even if they knew, they would be too afraid of him to say anything.
 

He only hoped that she, somewhere in the unseen worlds and everywhere in his body, would hear the words he whispered while he wrote with the blood that quickly died on the paper.

He had been a merchant's son, living in the southern part of Italy, in an area the Greeks had settled. He had learned their language as a child, and had accompanied his father in some of his business negotiations.
 
It was expected of him. He was to be his father's successor.

The merchants had visited wondrous places and he had listened to their tales with an eager beating heart. There were stories of pirates, and horrible sea monsters, distant lands and gods and treasures beyond anyone's wildest dreams. The stories that most raised his interest were the ones about gods and oracles.

One evening a wealthy Greek merchant was dining with them. When he sipped his wine from a fine ceramic cup, he told them about a wonderful oracle, Pythia, at the great temple of Delphi. This temple was dedicated to the god Paean, who in later times would be better known as Apollo. 
 

The oracle was a woman who went into a trance over a chasm whence the fumes of the great rotting snake Pythos rose. She told the future to the ones who approached her.
 

But she did not see the future for everyone. A goat had to be sacrificed and its entrails examined before it was decided whether Pythia would take her place seated on a tripod ready to go into trance. If the liver of the sacrificial goat revealed that it was favorable for the Pythia to answer a supplicant's questions, the supplicant was allowed to approach her.
 

The priests never allowed anyone to approach Pythia if the omens were ill. Once, it had occurred, and the Pythia had gone into a hysterical trance. She was never able to awaken from it, and died a few days later. A new Pythia had to be chosen from among the priestesses of the temple.

The Hunter, whose name was Ambrogio in that faraway life, could not forget the words of the merchant. He just knew inside himself that he was destined for great deeds, much greater than simply trading goods. He wanted to see the oracle, to hear directly from her what his great purpose in life was to be. His would be a life of adventure and wonder and riches, he knew that for certain.

His father was a very down-to-earth kind of a man, and Ambrogio knew he would never consent to his son's request to go to consult an oracle. Father did respect the gods, but his unwavering opinion was that it was not wise for a man to believe the ravings of oracles. Better to make one's own luck through hard work and giving offering to the gods at temples, rather than trusting in words which could be misinterpreted.

So Ambrogio made a plan. Instead of ever mentioning his wish to meet the oracle of Delphi, he began to talk about seeing the world and getting to know the places from which they sourced the goods for their trading business. Creating contacts with good merchants across the sea, that was important to its success. After a few months his father consented, agreeing finally that it was a good idea. And so, a trip was arranged for Ambrogio on a merchant boat on its way to the western coast of Greece. If the trip was successful, he would be allowed more opportunities to travel.