The Shadows Trilogy (Box Set: Edge of Shadows, Shadows Deep, Veiled Shadows) (38 page)

She opened her eyes and saw Martin’s wide unseeing eyes staring at her, a small line of blood running from his nose.

“Oh my god, Martin?” Katie shrieked. “Are you all right?”

“What the hell?” Will yelled at the same time as Ellie felt Martin’s grip go slack and slide out of hers. The man fell backwards and landed with a heavy thud on the floor.

“What did you do?” Katie screamed at her as she gathered Martin’s head into her lap.

Ellie’s body felt like it was humming and her mind was swimming, but this time she knew it wasn’t from the alcohol. She heard a few words that she didn’t understand being spoken to her left, and she knew that Lucy was casting some kind of spell. The whole world went quiet, and as Ellie’s eyes refocused, she saw that the reason it was quiet was because the small group in front of her had been frozen in place.

“Ellie, I’m…surprised,” Lucy said finally.

Pushing to her feet, Ellie made her way over to the couch and sat down, dropping her head in her hands. Even then, she couldn’t stop her mind from seeing two or three of the images in her mind.

“Ellie, you have to talk to me.” Lucy was on her hands and knees in front of Ellie then, with her cool hands on Ellie’s cheeks. “That was incredibly dangerous, what you just did. You’re too new. I don’t even know how you knew how to do that. Mikel said you were ignorant of the old ways.”

“What are you talking about?” Ellie moaned. “You are going to kill him now, aren’t you?”

Lucy looked over her shoulder at Martin lying on the floor. “No, I’m not, Ellie. Because you already did.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ellie stood over Martin’s body, staring down at him in disbelief. “I didn’t...I didn’t mean to. It was an accident”

“Well, you went after it with gusto, no doubt about it,” Lucy said. “That’s Ripher intuition in action.” There was a hitch in her voice that made Ellie glance at her.

That’s when she saw it. Lucy was afraid of her. “No one told me how this works. I didn’t even know I could do that. I’m scared out of my mind here. Shouldn’t someone be teaching me? Telling me what to do?” Ellie said. Her voice was shrill but she couldn’t help it.

“Hey, Ellie. It’s okay,” Lucy said, holding up her hands. “Thing is, nobody here can tell you that. It’d be like me trying to tell you how to use magic. We’re apples and oranges. I can only tell you what I know based on what I’ve seen and heard. I’ve never actually done what you are doing. I’m sorry.”

“And what am I doing?” Ellie choked.

“They don’t call your kind Riphers for nothing. Basically you rip out something of someone that doesn’t belong to you and you make it your own,” Lucy said.

Tears welled in the corners of Ellie’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall. “I didn’t ask to be like this. I never wanted to hurt Martin. But Mikel threatened to never let me see David again.”

Lucy tried to give her a hug but Ellie pushed her away. “Don’t. Just don’t. I feel like a sick and demented person. Now I’m a murderer too.”

Lucy’s eyes crept up over her shoulder and narrowed. Then she pushed up to her feet. “I don’t think you are supposed to be in here right now.”

Ellie turned and saw David standing there with a shocked expression on his face as he witnessed the scene in front of him.

“David!” Ellie jumped up and went to him. She grabbed his hand to try to get his eyes to lock on hers. “This isn’t what it looks like. Let’s go somewhere and I can explain.”

Although it was under her breath, Ellie still heard Lucy mutter, “Or it’s exactly what it looks like.”

Ellie tugged on David’s hand and pulled him out into the hallway and down to the foyer at the bottom of the stairs. Then she hugged him and was relieved when he put his arms around her and stroked her hair.

“David, I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she whispered against his shoulder. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“Ellie, what happened in there? What happened to that kid?” David asked, pulling away. “Does this have to do with Mikel?”

Ellie shook her head and refused to meet his eyes. “It’s hard to explain, David. Mikel threatened me and said that I had to do what he wanted me to do, otherwise he’d never let me see you again.”

Stepping back, David took Ellie by the shoulders and made her look him in the eye. “Elle, what did you do?”

This time when the tears came, she didn’t stop them. “I don’t know how to control it, David. When I touched him, I was able to see it. It’s touch that does it, just like with Jake.”

“What did you see, Ellie?” he asked, gently pulling it out of her.

“His ability. He was gifted, kind of like me.” Ellie stopped to think for a moment. The pulse inside of her was still there, and she knew what it was now. It was strange how she knew, but she did. “It wasn’t strong, but sometimes Martin could see what would happen before it happened. He had premonitions, but only in his dreams. If anything, I’d say that it was a latent ability. It was buried so deep inside his mind, he probably didn’t even know it was there.”

The dismay on David’s face said it all. She didn’t even need to ask what he was thinking about her statement. “How do you know that, Ellie?”

“Everyone keeps telling me that I’m a Ripher and that when the time came I would understand what that meant. And even you said that people like me are rare. Once I let it loose, it took over. But I can feel that ability that I took from him inside me now. I know everything about it, including how to use it if I wanted to. But I don’t. Lucy was supposed to help me, but I did it wrong. In the end, I hurt him.”

“Lucy is that woman who was with you in the library?”

Ellie realized that David had been missing during the entire evening since Lucy’s introduction. She nodded. “Mikel brought her here to help me with taking people’s abilities. Because I told him when I first got here I wasn’t going to kill anyone. According to Mikel, that’s Lucy’s job.”

David let out a deep breath. “So Lucy killed that boy in there.”

She realized that David sounded relieved. The confession felt like it was ripped from her throat. “No, David. I did it. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

She watched David crumble in on himself as he sat down on the stairs with an empty expression. That scared her more than anything that she had experienced so far. She sat down next to him. “I swear, David. I didn’t do it on purpose. You know me. This is so far removed from who I am that it’s almost laughable. It seems like just yesterday I was nothing more than a woman who owned a little coffee shop and had nothing to worry about except what I was going to do on Saturday night. Now I’m being told that I’m some twisted thing that straddles the world of the living and the dead and takes away psychic abilities. For what purpose no one has bothered to tell me yet, but overall, my mind and body seem to understand how it’s done.”

“I’ve heard of Riphers, of course, but I guess I didn’t really understand fully what they did,” David said. He gazed at Ellie with a look she had never seen before, like he had no idea who she was.

The thought that David would turn on her twisted like a knife in her heart. “David, I can’t do this without you. I need you on my side. I promise that it won’t happen again. I mean, that’s the whole reason that Lucy is here. She’s supposed to be the one with no morals who has no problem killing these people off.”

“I’m struggling to understand how we fit in here,” David said. “I don’t know how you could have any part in this and be okay with it.”

“We don’t fit in here,” Ellie said softly. “I’m not okay with it. But I have to keep us safe, and that means that there is a good chance I will have to do some things that neither one of us is very comfortable with.”

They sat in silence for a long time. Ellie’s thoughts were a jumbled mess, and she assumed that David’s were too. She wondered if what she had just done would drive a wedge between them that couldn’t be undone. The only thing she could see as an upside was that David was acting like himself again.

David finally spoke. “I told you that my memories have been coming back. Things like this didn’t happen when Lillian and Joseph were here, but I guess that makes sense since they didn’t have your…skill. They took care of the people that traveled through the waypoint, but they only provided intel on the ones that they suspected may be useful to Mikel in the Afterlife. I am sure he had other minions around to do his dirty work after that. I remember that Lillian lived in constant fear that he would decide she wasn’t useful to him, so she figured out other ways to bring the necessary energy to the waypoint to keep it open.”

“Like what?” Ellie asked.

“If you read Max Turner’s book, then you know that a portal can be opened that allows the living to enter the waypoint. I mean, that’s how you and I got here. Over time, the mansion was occupied. Every time Lillian was able to interact easily with the regular world, she managed to draw someone in that she and Joseph could use to feed on.”

“Like Joe Klein,” Ellie said. The real estate agent had been an innocent bystander who was drawn in just like Ellie. Unfortunately for Joe Klein, Lillian was the type of predator who liked to play with her food before she ate it.

“Yes,” David said. “Most of those happened when I was just a kid. I didn’t know any better. I remember now playing with the children that lived here for a little while when it was an orphanage. Of course, they were the only ones that could see me. This strange existence has been all I’ve ever known. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m in no position to judge you, Ellie.”

His words lifted Ellie’s heart. “Thank you, David. You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that.”

He slid down to the step that she was sitting on and slid his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. “He will try to pull us apart. We can’t trust anyone here, just each other.”

Ellie looked into his eyes, and for a moment she was able to forget where they were and what she had just done, which was something that she desperately needed. It was as though she was transported back to her apartment when they sat in front of the fireplace and all the rest of the world dropped away. It was just Ellie and David.

His lips closed the distance between them and Ellie leaned in eagerly. Their kiss was hungry and almost panicked. His hands slipped behind her neck, pulling her in even closer, as if he was afraid that she was going to disappear. Inside that kiss, they could forget all the strangeness around them. There was nothing but hunger, need, and skin.

As his hands made their way down her shoulders and to her waist, she wrapped her arms around his neck. Her body felt like it was on fire and she felt another hunger that burned much deeper than her need for food or even air.

She moaned when his lips pulled away, but he grasped her hand with a tender smile and helped her to her feet. His lips found her earlobe then and wandered down to her neck and she squirmed against him in delight. “Let’s go to my room,” he whispered.

Ellie readily agreed. She needed to feel normal and forget the incident with Martin and try to get her thoughts straight. She couldn’t think of a better way to do that than losing herself in David’s arms.

They had just reached the landing to turn up to the second floor and David was kissing her again when she heard a loud throat clearing from the bottom of the stairs. Ellie groaned when she saw Lucy standing there with her arms crossed.

“Ellie? I need you for a minute,” Lucy said.

“Can’t it wait?” Ellie said. David’s fingers were dancing impatiently on her waist as he half hid behind her as if trying to duck Lucy’s wrath.

“No, it can’t,” Lucy said flatly. She jerked her head toward the library.

That reminder was just enough to pull Ellie back to her senses. She felt horrible that she was giving in to such a guilty pleasure when she knew that she should be feeling just plain guilty. She turned to David. “Hold that thought, okay? I’ll be right back.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” David growled. He looked frustrated.

“I promise,” Ellie said. Regretfully, she let go of his hand and joined Lucy at the foot of the stairs.

Lucy was still looking behind Ellie. Ellie glanced over her shoulder and then saw the door to David’s room close. “Didn’t take you long to get cozy. Not like you just killed somebody or anything”

Ellie’s lips felt swollen and she touched them gently. “I’m a mess, Lucy, okay? I don’t even know how to deal with what just happened. David made me feel like I wasn’t a complete freak and I need that more than ever right now. I don’t need you judging me.”

“He’s a doctor, right?” Lucy said.

“That’s what he did when he was on the Other Side, yes,” Ellie said. She could tell that Lucy didn’t think highly of David at all and she wanted to know why. “What’s the deal, Lucy? I love him. He and I came here together. I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“For a guy who saw life and death all the time, I’m just surprised that he didn’t at least try to help Martin. Not like he could have, but still, that seems weird.”

Ellie frowned. As much as she didn’t like to admit it, Lucy wasn’t entirely wrong. David’s passion for his work had been one of the things that attracted her to him in the first place. It wasn’t like him to not even offer to help.

“What are you saying?” Ellie asked.

Lucy shrugged. “I know you’ve known him awhile and you’re in
love
and all that, and you’ve only known me for five minutes. But the big A has a strange effect on people. I like you, Ellie. I’d hate to see you get hurt.”

“David would never hurt me,” Ellie said. But she had a nagging feeling in the back of her mind again that she was missing something. “He’s been through a lot and he was sick when he transitioned back here. I’m sure that’s all that was, plus it was pretty obvious that Martin was gone.”

“Speaking of Martin, that’s why I wanted to talk to you,” Lucy said. “You aren’t going to leave me all by myself to clean up the mess. And you’d better get your story straight before the escorts get here.”

“Escorts?” Ellie had forgotten that part of Jeffrey’s story, which appeared to be true. Every time she felt like she picked up one piece of information she found three others that she didn’t know.

“I can help with wiping the memories of the other two so they don’t remember anything about what happened to Martin. That’s the easy part. Disposing of a body in a waypoint? Bit more difficult, but not impossible. Lying to the escorts? That one’s all you. The other bosses find out what’s going on here and there’s literally going to be hell to pay. Mikel wants me to help you, but I’m definitely not taking the fall for something that wasn’t my fault.”

“I don’t get it,” Ellie said. “You were going to kill whoever I took the gift from anyway. I would’ve thought that you’d have already thought about this.”

“My spell would have had them fading out at some point after they were picked up by the escorts, at a point where they were already where they were supposed to be and those kinds of things aren’t noticed as much. I hide it by making it look like the same type of magic that happens when people are taken for reincarnation. But having people die at the waypoint is bad all the way around. Let’s just say that the comings and goings of the soon-to-be-dearly-departed are much more closely monitored.”