Chasing Shadows (2 page)

I looked at Cecelia expectantly but she shook her head, looking apologetic. "I'm sorry, dear. It's like the slate has been wiped clean. I can't pick up anything."

"I think the best idea is to go back to my house," Lenore said, taking control of the situation. "It's not a good idea for us to be here too long. We don't know what could be coming back."

Lenore's words scared me, but I thought of my aunt's scream. "Isn't that exactly why we should stay here? So that we can confront whatever comes back?" I was scared witless about what could possibly return to the scene of the crime, but it wasn't bravery that made me want to stay. It was a burning anger. I would make whatever hurt my aunt pay.

"I understand why you want to stay," Lenore said gently. "But it'll be pointless if we don't know how to defend ourselves. We need to learn more about what's happening."

"How do we do that?"

Lenore paused before answering me, looking uncertain. "We can put you under hypnosis."

"Lenore!" Marie exclaimed, looking dismayed. "You know that's the last thing Brenda would want. It's too dangerous. It's dangerous enough for any seer but Caitlin has no experience. She's just a beginner. What if we're not able to pull her back?" She turned to look at Cecelia for backup, but Cecelia just stared down at the floor. Marie turned back to me when she saw that she wasn't going to get Cecelia's support. "Caitlin, I know how important it is to find your aunt. But you have no idea how dangerous it is to put you under. Even with our energies, if you're not strong enough, it doesn't matter how hard we try. We won't be able to pull you out of it. And there's no guarantee that you'll see anything helpful while you're under."

"Marie, Brenda told us herself that Caitlin is more powerful than any seer she's encountered. And Brenda was the most powerful of us all." Lenore turned to me, looking grim. "I'm not saying there's no danger involved. There's a chance that you might not be strong enough for this. But I believe you are."

I nodded, knowing that there had never been a doubt in my mind once Lenore suggested it. "I'll do it."

Marie sighed, shaking her head but looking resigned. Cecelia looked up at me with a smile, her hopefulness almost childlike. Lenore stood up briskly, looking determined now that she had a course of action.

"My house is only a few minutes away. Let's go."

I grabbed my bag and followed the women outside, sliding into the backseat of a dilapidated green Honda that looked like the only thing holding it together was rust. I was surprised I hadn't heard the car pull up once I saw its condition, but when Lenore turned the engine it purred softly.

"Looks are deceiving," Lenore said with a wry smile, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. "Just like us."

I nodded, not knowing what to say. She was right. I would have never looked at these three women and thought they had the ability to save people's lives and destroy monsters lurking in the shadows. I prayed that they were powerful enough to help me.

Lenore's house was a short car ride away, as she had promised, and I was relieved when we pulled up to a normal-looking neighborhood. Lenore's house was bigger than my aunt's, but just as neat and tidy. A part of me had been afraid that she lived in some witch's shanty with potions bubbling in black cauldrons. Instead, it was a Tudor style house with black awnings.

Lenore directed me to sit on an elegant sofa in the living room once we entered her house. She went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. "Here. Drink this."

"Why? Will it help with the hypnosis?" I obligingly drank the water, draining the glass.

"No. I just thought you looked thirsty."

"Oh," I said, not sure how to take her eccentric response. I looked at the women standing before me, realizing I barely knew them. Yet I was putting all my trust in their hands. "So where do we do this?"

"We might as well do it here," Lenore said, indicating the living room.

"You mean, you don't have a secret room where you hold all your ceremonies?"

Marie smiled at my question. "We're just normal people like you, Caitlin. We don't fly around on broomsticks and we don't drink the blood of bats." She winked at me, obviously trying to relieve the tension. "Well, only when there's a full moon."

I gave her a weak smile, not wanting her to realize that her joke wasn't far from the truth of my thoughts of them.

"Quiet," Lenore admonished. She turned to me, looking serious. "I want to explain what's going to happen before we put you under. We'll link hands around you and pool our energies to help push you deep under hypnosis. But we need your energy too. A chant also helps. It funnels all our energy, pushing out other thoughts. We'll all chant '
Be as one'
, including you. Just imagine yourself sinking underwater. Deep underwater until there's nothing but darkness. If it works, you'll see flashes of images. They might make sense. They might not. Try to hold onto everything you see so that you remember the images when we pull you out."

The thought of imagining myself sinking underwater was frightening, reminding me of Simon's vision. At the same time, having to chant
'Be as one
' made me want to grimace. It sounded too much like a stereotypical séance you would see in a horror movie. But what did I know?

The women stood around me in a circle, holding hands and looking down at me. Marie was frowning slightly while Cecelia nodded at me encouragingly. Lenore was expressionless as she directed me to close my eyes.

I started chanting with the women.
"Be as one. Be as one. Be as one."
The chanting continued and I couldn't help but feel a little foolish. I was trying to imagine myself sinking underwater, but I was acutely aware of the sofa under me and the bright lights that I could detect through my eyelids. I idly wondered why Lenore hadn't turned off the lights. It seemed like it would set the mood more.

I shook off my wandering thoughts, forcing myself to concentrate as I chanted. I thought of my aunt's last words to me, telling me to come to her. That we would fight the vardogers together. I thought of Sarah, of the countless hours she had spent consoling me after my visions. Her fierce protectiveness of me. And I thought of Simon. Of how it had felt to be in his embrace. Of his words of love. I felt myself slowly fading, the women's voices sounding fainter and fainter. I vaguely wondered if I was falling asleep when suddenly there was a rushing in my ears and I felt as if I was falling down an endless hole, a forceful wind surging against me, pushing me down until I felt I was going to suffocate.

Chapter Two

I opened my eyes, trying to escape the darkness but instead of seeing my aunt's friends standing above me, nothing changed. I closed my eyes and opened them again, willing myself to see something, but there was no discernible difference between my eyes being open or closed.

Panic started to rise as I tried to move but I felt bodiless. I willed my hand to move up in front of my face to see if I could make out its shape, but I felt no answering movement from my limb. In fact, it felt as if I had no limbs, as if I was just floating along, a soul with no body to call its own.

Fear wasn't the right word to describe what I was feeling. Fear sounded too human. Too concrete and definable. A blackness had entered me, a blackness so profound and deep that it swallowed me whole, from the inside out.

I was on the verge of giving myself into the blackness when I suddenly saw a shaft of light. It was shimmering, refracting onto itself like it was caught underwater, incandescent beams illuminating the murky depths. I strained my eyes, the only part of my body that seemed to be working. The only part of my body that seemed to exist. I tried to make out recognizable shapes before me, frustration mounting when all I could see was rays of flickering light.

Suddenly the rays of light moved with fast purpose, no longer meandering but pushing against the darkness with force. And they were aimed right towards me, funneling through the dark with a single-minded determination. I whimpered, although the sound reverberated through my mind instead of being audible. The lights hit me with a fury and everything exploded into color, figures and sounds moving through my mind with dizzying speed, faces contorting and bodies straining. I could hear voices, both familiar and foreign, warning me, guiding me, threatening me. It was a mind-numbing over-abundance of sensations and I struggled to hear everything, to retain everything. To understand everything.

Just as abruptly, the images became blurry, the sounds discordant and unintelligible. It was painful to experience and I felt claustrophobic. The sounds and images were flooding every part of my psyche, digging into every crevice of my mind like they were trying to overwrite what was already there.

It was easy to let go, to let the sensations overtake me. It didn't hurt if I didn't resist it. The feeling of slowly disappearing was pleasant, like I was being lulled into a gentle dream where I could finally rest.

There was a niggling thought in my head. I tried to push it away but it surged back to the forefront of my mind. Aunt Brenda hugging me the last time I saw her. Sarah's delight when she surprised me with a homemade dinner on my last birthday, despite the smoke that was billowing from the kitchen. And Simon. Simon's eyes when he told me he loved me.

I jerked forward mentally, wanting to clear my head from thoughts of rest. I tried to push up through the darkness, like a diver breaking up through the water after a deep plummet. I had to get back to the surface to help them. They needed me.

"Caitlin!"

My eyes fluttered open, squinting from the light that seemed harsher and brighter than before. Lenore, Cecelia and Marie were hovering over me looking terrified, their faces flushed as they repeatedly yelled out my name. Lenore had one hand on my shoulder and was shaking me roughly.

I sat up and pushed off Lenore's hand, trying to get some room to breathe. "I'm okay, I'm okay. Please stop crowding me."

Marie fell onto a chair opposite me, her shoulders slumping with relief. The relief turned to anger when her attention shifted to Lenore. "I told you it was too dangerous! We almost lost her!"

Cecelia was still standing, wringing her hands together and staring at me wide-eyed. Lenore ignored Marie's outburst and sat down on the sofa next to me, watching me closely.

"Did you see anything?"

All the images I had experienced crowded my mind and I struggled to put them into order, to make sense of them. "Yes, but it was confusing. I just got snippets of things, not the full picture." I took a deep breath before continuing. "But I can tell you that the vardogers are stronger than ever. Aunt Brenda told me about their physical tell once they've overtaken their person. About the pupils dilating when you say their name. They can control that now. They've made that weakness obsolete."

Cecelia sat down at my revelation, wringing her hands even more frantically and making a small sound of distress. Lenore ignored her, her eyes boring into mine. "What else?"

"Simon and Sarah's vardogers were able to detach themselves because of Claudia. My vardoger isn't even with me now. It's with Claudia. Claudia's vardoger is no ordinary shadow. Now that it has control over Claudia's body, its powers are immeasurable. It has the power to sustain other vardogers, to forge their energies together so that they can defeat even the most powerful seer."

"And who's the most powerful seer?" Lenore's voice was hushed. Even Cecelia had stopped wringing her hands. I couldn't see Maria's expression because her head was bowed.

"It-it can't be me," I stammered, my heart pumping loudly, fear coursing through every vein in my body.

"Who is it?" Lenore asked again, her voice harsher this time.

"I saw them trying to enter me, to take over my body. My vardoger, Simon and Sarah's vardogers...they're going to try and overtake me. I think they believe that their combined energies will be strong enough to push out my soul. Even while I'm awake." My voice had quieted to a whisper, and I felt chilled by my own words. Saying out loud what I saw under hypnosis made everything seem real. Too real. "Or worse. Even if they can't push out my soul, they think they can still overtake me. So my soul is trapped while they control my body."

"But the iridium." Cecelia interrupted, straightening with a determined expression on her face. "They can't touch you while you're wearing iridium."

Lenore didn't turn to look at Cecelia. Instead, she kept her gaze on me, looking contemplative. Even though her look wasn't accusatory, I felt as if I were somehow to blame for all of this. I couldn't help feeling guilty as I told them the worst news.

"They've found something to counteract iridium. To negate iridium's properties that protects seers from vardogers. I don't know what it is. It looks like iridium, but instead of reflecting light, it reflects shadows."

Cecelia cried out in horror and even Lenore's expression darkened. Marie kept her head bowed, but she started rocking back and forth.

"I'm sorry." I felt the need to apologize. I didn't want to be the bearer of this horrible news.

"Was there anything else?"

I bit my lip before answering Lenore. A part of me wanted to keep the last thing I had seen under hypnosis a secret. It's not that I thought my aunt's friends had any ill intentions. After all, they were her inner circle, the people that she relied on. But I didn't know if I had the luxury of trusting anyone right now.

"Caitlin?" Lenore sounded impatient and I decided I would have to take the plunge and trust
someone.
I couldn't do this on my own.

"I saw Aunt Brenda. She told me to look for her journal. That I'll find the answers that I'm looking for there."

"Answers to what? To the vardogers evolving? To what they've found to combat iridium?"

"I don't know. Everything started becoming hazy and then I felt like I was drowning. Maybe you can put me under again—"

Marie lifted her head and finally spoke. Her eyes were shimmering with tears but her expression was fierce. "No! Absolutely not. Caitlin, we almost lost you. Your pulse kept getting slower and fainter until we couldn't feel it anymore. You were barely breathing. At one point, I think you stopped completely. And your skin...it was so cold. We tried and tried but we couldn't pull you out."