The Shadows Trilogy (Box Set: Edge of Shadows, Shadows Deep, Veiled Shadows) (34 page)

Ellie didn’t like the sound of that at all. She set her fork down and crossed her arms. “Enough of the vagueness and the niceties. What is a Ripher? What does a Ripher do that’s so different than what Lillian was able to do?”

David’s smile fell. “Riphers collect things, Ellie, from souls that are special. Ones that have gifts and abilities like yours. What did you think they did?” He must have recognized the look of horror on her face. “What you do is so important but there are those around that don’t think too highly of Riphers. That’s one secret to keep under your hat for now. Just do what Jeffrey tells you to do when there are souls here and you’ll be fine. Mikel will protect you and so will I.”

Ellie felt faint. She pushed her chair back from the table. “I think I need to rest before dinner, Dav—Jack. I feel exhausted.”

“I think that is a good idea, Ellie. You need to be well rested for your guests,” Jeffrey said, reappearing in the doorway to the kitchen. “I’m sure you remember the way to your room?”

As she nodded, David stood up as well. She gestured for him to sit back down. “I’ll be back down soon. Thanks, Jack. You’ve been really helpful.” She knew that she should have phrased her exit message better, but she was beyond caring at the moment. It was all too much to process. Things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

CHAPTER TEN

He watched it all unfold in front of his eyes, but there was nothing that he could do because he was nothing but a passenger tucked away in his own mind. Seeing that Ellie was safe, at least for the moment, had been a relief, but it didn’t take long for him to realize that could change at any moment. While the memories were still fragments, he knew that Mikel would stop at nothing to take what he wanted. Lillian wasn’t the only one who had hoodwinked young David with the idea that what they did was nothing more than an elaborate game. Mikel made him think that they were friends, but he saw now that was a lie. He was nothing but a pawn to be used in Mikel’s scheming. It made him angry to recall how often he had been used like this in the past, and as Mikel exited his body, the burning sensation of Mikel’s consciousness ripping away from his was all too familiar.

“Bastard,” he managed to cough out as he doubled over in pain, falling forward onto the floor.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He heard the deep chuckle above his head.

David could see his reflection in the perfectly shined black tips of Mikel’s shoes. “She’ll figure it out that you aren’t me,” he spat.

“You think so? I think I’m rather convincing,” Mikel said. “After all, I’ve played the part of Jack more in your lifetime than you ever have. I don’t think you strayed too far from it on the Other Side, whatever you’d like to believe. Actually, when you think about it, David, you are more like me than you may care to realize.”

David’s head hurt as he considered the implications of what Mikel said. Mikel had hidden right in front of Lillian and Joseph for years, observing their plotting and manipulating them from behind his eyes. David had no idea how they had never suspected that there was much more to their adopted son than met the eye. Mikel had maneuvered them and played with them like a child would play with a pair of dolls. But then, as now, David was helpless to fight back. When Mikel wanted to control him, he did. There was nothing he could do to resist.

“You are going to do nothing but make her despise me, and then what good’ll that do you?” David said. He put an arm up on the table and hoisted himself back into the chair. That small action alone took almost all the energy he could muster. Mikel freely availed himself of David’s life force when he sat within David’s body, and he remembered that it took time for it to regenerate.

“As long as she’s convinced that you’re just confused from your transition and that you are still on her side, her affections won’t change, no matter what I do. That’s the wonderful thing about using love to manipulate. Once you love someone, it’s very hard to stop,” Mikel said smugly.

David raised his head so that he could meet Mikel’s amused stare. He glared at him, but that was the extent of his ability to be defiant. He noticed that Mikel was wearing a pinstripe three-piece suit. “What are you so dressed up for? Got a date with the devil?”

“Oh, David. You are so droll. You were much wittier before spending time on the Other Side. By the way, did you like my name drop swap? That one got her for sure. But I can’t have my Ripher distracted by romance. I need her focused on the job at hand, and that is finding me some souls with some abilities that I can take for my own. I’ve been looking for her for a long time, David, and you will help me accomplish my goals whether you want to or not.”

“I’ll pick
or not
,” David said through gritted teeth. “I’ve been your puppet for far too long, Mikel. Kill me. I don’t care.”

Mikel bent over and put his hands on either side of David’s chair. “You do care because you care about Ellie. And as long as my little Ripher cares about you, you are useful to me and to my waypoint. Besides, as long as I need Ellie alive, I am certain I can think of other ways to torture her short of actually killing her.”

David grabbed the front of Mikel’s shirt. “You wouldn’t dare!”

Rock-hard hands gripped David’s fingers and he cried out in pain as he let go of Mikel’s shirt. Mikel stood up and carefully rearranged his shirt and tie. But Jeffrey still did not let go of David’s fingers. David had forgotten the old man was even in the room. He bit his lip, refusing to ask to be let go.

Mikel’s face twisted and for just a moment David saw Mikel’s inhuman visage hidden behind his handsome exterior. Mikel was really good at playing human, but David could never allow himself to forget that the thing that actually lived underneath was not even close. Mikel was a creature with no morals, no values, and no humanity to speak of. He existed only to further his own ambitions and expand his power within Hell. And with the little bits of information he had skimmed from Mikel’s mind while Mikel was inside his body, having Ellie in his grasp meant Mikel was poised to do it.

“Jeffrey, I’d like you to escort David back to his room. I think given his current attitude that it’s best that he doesn’t have an opportunity to interact with Ellie without my own personal supervision. I’m sure you can make the appropriate excuses to her about his absence. I have some other things to take care of in the meantime.”

“Of course,” Jeffrey said.

From what David remembered, the old butler had never cared for him. At the time he thought it was either he didn’t like children or the fact that Lillian was constantly showering him with attention. Now he considered the possibility that Jeffrey considered him weak and unworthy of his consideration given Mikel’s control over him. Jeffrey had been yet another of Mikel’s spies that Lillian never knew was there. Right now it meant that Jeffrey was a roadblock; a roadblock he would have to get through to get to Ellie.

David felt Jeffrey’s hands clasp his shoulders from behind and he was roughly pulled to his feet. David expected to be dragged up the stairs, and he was planning to make enough noise during the journey to his room to hopefully attract Ellie’s attention. Her room was up on the third floor, but the stairwell was open all the way to the top.

Mikel grinned at him and then made a small wave. “See you later, alligator.”

The scene faded and when David’s eyes readjusted, he saw that he was standing in the middle of the room Mikel had been given in the mansion when he reappeared as David. Another piece appeared in the mental jigsaw puzzle of his memories. All that physics stuff flew right out the window when you were dealing with a waypoint. Entities tied to it that weren’t bound by a mortal body could transport themselves anywhere they wanted. The transfer was not as pleasant for someone like David. His skin crawled and it felt for a few moments like he had an extreme sunburn.

He pulled away from Jeffrey’s grasp and walked over to the chair where he remembered Ellie sitting earlier. He flopped into it and stared at Jeffrey. “So let me guess. I’m grounded and supposed to stay in my room until Mikel says I can come out?”

The expression on Jeffrey’s face was priceless. David watched as the butler’s face got red and the man’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to say something but reconsidered each statement. “You will not leave this room because you won’t be able to.” He pointed and David saw that the door to the hallway was gone. And the air was becoming uncomfortably warm.

“I thought, and Mikel agreed, that you may have missed your previous room. So he’s agreed to let me recreate as much of that environment here as I see fit. Now if Ellie or any one of the others were to come looking for you, all they’d find would be an empty room. I think that it won’t take long before you’ll reconsider your position on joining Mikel. It is pointless to try to fight him. He will win. He always does, and it would be unfortunate for you to lose Ellie’s affections in some desperate, misguided need to assert your independence.”

“He needs me. He said so himself,” David said, sounding more confident than he felt. He had a sinking suspicion that Mikel had an ace up his sleeve that David couldn’t see.

Jeffrey’s next words confirmed it. “If Mikel so chooses, David, you will be nothing more than a temporary fix to a problem that he can resolve through other means.”

“Ellie loves me. And I love her. You can’t just chuck that aside without risking weakening the waypoint, which I know he won’t do. Even if she is a Ripher, he can’t be sure that her psychic ability would be able to sustain it on her own without killing her.” David wasn’t sure where the words had come from, but as soon as he said them he knew they were true. He needed to remember more quickly.

“She loves you now,” Jeffrey said with a sly smile. “If she were to perhaps change her affections to a more suitable partner, one who had abilities superior to even her own, well now, that would change things considerably, don’t you think?”

The thought was sickening and David realized what Jeffrey was saying. “She could never care about a thing as revolting as him. She’s a good person, and she cares deeply about other people. Mikel kills people. There’s no way he could pull that off.”

“I think you’d be surprised at the caliber of women Mikel has wooed over the course of his existence,” Jeffrey said coolly. “In any case, I’ll leave you with that thought to mull over. You can be a problem or you can be part of the solution. If you do truly care for Ellie, I think you need to do some very deep thinking of what your next move will be.” With those words, Jeffrey faded away.

As soon as the man vanished, the temperature in the room climbed quickly. David was beside himself with worry and he started to pace the room, despite the fact that it took less than a minute for the familiar sweat to start gathering on his forehead. He knew that he was going to be very miserable soon, but that paled in comparison to what Jeffrey had just told him.

He should have considered that Mikel would eventually make a play for Ellie’s heart to ensure a back-up plan. He had been stupid not to anticipate that. If Ellie did begin to care for Mikel, then Mikel could bypass his need for David altogether. In Mikel’s game, that would be a win-win situation, and an attractive one. For David, that was the worst possible scenario; not only would Ellie be forever trapped in the waypoint, but she would also be tied to a man who would rip her heart to shreds for sport.

David slammed his fist into the wall where the door should be. A hole appeared, and as soon as he pulled his fist away, the hole disappeared. So it was remarkably like his previous prison cell.  He wondered if it had truly been his fate to be damned. Turning his back against the wall, David slid to the ground.

Damned. That’s what he was. Over the course of a century, his body had been used to watch and manipulate his adoptive parents as well as the poor souls that had the misfortune to be drawn to this waypoint for their transition. He had never known what it was like to be normal until he was sent into the real world. Even then, although he didn’t know it, he had been prodded and guided to Ellie’s doorstep.

He had been manipulated to find her and bring her to the waypoint. His love had trapped her here as surely as her decision to save their lives when it was offered up by Mikel. The thought had crossed his mind, as it did now, if his feelings for Ellie were real or manufactured, but then he remembered that the waypoint wouldn’t have accepted them as its own personal “battery” unless the feelings were real. That gave him a small amount of comfort. That also meant that even though she had been manipulated as well, Ellie’s feelings were as real as his own. It wasn’t much to cling to, but it made all the difference.

David knew that if he had any chance of really helping Ellie, his options were to find a way to play nice with Mikel, or find a way to win at Mikel’s game. If he did what Mikel wanted, then there was less need for Mikel to use him as his body puppet. As long as he had an opening where he was the one in control around Ellie, there was a shot he could send her a message somehow and let her know that she was in danger and that he was trying to figure out a way to help. That as much as he wanted her to be able to, she couldn’t trust him unless he gave her some kind of signal. He was going to have to be very subtle about it. Mikel could smell deceit from a mile away. He had to think. All he had for the time being was time. He would hold out hope that Ellie wasn’t going to be distracted by Mikel and his charm.

David leaned his head back against the wall and let the heat soak into his skin. If there was a way to beat Mikel, he was going to find it.