Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) (12 page)

Harold nodded.

“What battalion?”

He stuttered, then said the first number that came to his head: “Uh, 1
st
Battalion.”

“Of the 9
th
?”

“Uh-huh,” Harold said, not looking into the man’s eyes.

“I’ll be goddamned, you guys really earned that nickname.” He chuckled. “The Walking Dead. Man, that ain’t a joke. You look like you crawled right out of the grave.”

With the bartender’s acceptance, Harold felt a new confidence growing inside of him. He shrugged. “It was my duty to serve this great nation.”

The bartender smiled. “This great nation is a pile of horseshit. That Carter is too soft. Gonna get us nuked, he is.”

From his right, where the man in the paisley shirt went, him and his group of friends — all equally as hairy and unkempt; hippies, if Harold had ever seen them — whooped at the television, drawing the bartender’s eye. “Goddamned Yankees,” he mumbled, then looked up at Harold. “C’mon let me get you a drink. I owe you one for being such a righteous prick.” He clapped him on the back and started off towards the bar.

Harold smiled, accepting the generosity.

The man started fiddling with the tap, filled a mug full of Budweiser, then turned with it in hand, the foam spilling over the glass. Behind him a swinging door opened with a girl carrying a plate of steaming hot chicken wings and french fries. The smell made Harold’s stomach flip. But he grabbed the beer nonetheless, bringing the mug to his lips. Even Budweiser tasted good to him, which was odd because Harold Storm was a whiskey man most of his life, ever since he found the dusty airplane bottles of Jack Daniels hidden far away on the top shelf of his mother’s medicine cabinet. At thirteen, he brought some to Tyler, his older neighbor, and the two drank all of them out by a fire that summer’s night. Made him feel cool back then, more than a decade ago, and still made him feel cool today. Except now the drink had been a need now more than a need to feel cool.

“Hope you don’t mind one of these big motherfuckers,” the bartender said. “Or the Bud. I hate those assholes that sip on those fruity drinks with an umbrella.”

Big motherfuckers,
he thought.
No, it couldn’t be. Where in the Hell am I?
When
am I?

“Don’t mind at all. Love some Budweiser,” which was a lie, but lying was the least of his worries at that point.

“Good, good. And you, pal, are a goddamned war hero! War heroes only drink the best.”
 

He bent down and pulled a glass bottle from the cooler below, popped the cap off with a hiss and raised it up. Harold clinked his drink to the bartender’s, then they both gulped deeply.

“So what brings you to the Shallows? You from the city?”

Harold nodded. “Yep. Just needed a day off from work.”

“What do you do?”

“Well I’m a cabbie, but it’s so much more than that, I can’t even begin to explain — ”

“Goddamn! You’re a former POW and now you’re fuckin’ cabbie? This country, I’ll tell ya. If they weren’t so soft up north, I’d move to Canada!”

Harold held a hand up as if to tell the bartender to calm down, but the commentator from the televisions echoed loudly and the chatter from the patrons mixed with it. Nobody would’ve heard his outburst, not unless he had done it through a megaphone.

“Say I didn’t get your name, fella.”

“Harold Storm,” Harold said without skipping a beat.

“Well, real nice to meet ya, Harold. And thank you for serving…” He trailed off, eyes glazed over, mouth dropped open as he looked past Harold to the entrance of the bar, where the dining area ended.
 

Harold waved a hand in front of the bartender’s face. “Uh, hello?” he said, snapping his fingers.

Suddenly Harold noticed the deafening silence of the bar. Well not total silence. The television was still on, and the commentators still talked in their loud, practiced voices.

“A smack into right field. Going…going…outta here!”

But the crowd had stopped, at least the men had. And the bar was mostly full of men. Harold turned his head, slowly swiveling from the end of the bar to the direction the bartender looked. A few women were there, too, and some still spoke to each other in polite voices, but the women paired with their boyfriends and lovers looked on with pursed lips and harsh eyes.

Harold’s jaw nearly dropped too when he caught a look at the source of the conversation-killer. A blonde bombshell, looking like a pin-up girl fresh from the pages of Playboy, stood in the threshold wearing nothing but her bikini. She had tanned skin, silky hair, and a body that somehow looked both hard enough to cut diamonds and soft enough to get lost in.

She stood with a hand on her hip, sunhat flopped over her head, and one temple of her sunglasses pressed between blindingly-white teeth. She smiled at Harold, who basically melted right then on his barstool. But when he felt the stir in his loins — that sexual longing for this woman out of his league and out of his time — he felt a pang of guilt, the cause unknown.

“Hello, Harold Storm,” the woman said.

“Hello,” he said.

She motioned to the bartender. “Chester, dear, Mr. Storm is with me. I hope you don’t mind if I steal him from you.”

Chester practically drooled onto the wooden bar top. “No, go right ahead, Cindy. But I told ya, you can call me Chet, I don’t mind.”

When she leaned in, Harold caught her scent — cigarettes and sex. Her full red lips puckered towards the bartender, who Harold now recognized as a younger version of his own bartender, but he was too smitten by the woman to let that new information sink in.

“Thank you, Chet,” she whispered. And to Harold, it seemed like everyone in the bar, even the restaurant — Hell, the whole world — watched her every lithe move.

Chet exhaled a shaky breath. “Say, Cindy, you free this weekend. Wanna maybe catch that new movie everyone’s talking about, the Star War or whatever?”

She winked. “You have my number, Chet. Don’t be shy.” And with that she turned and began to walk towards a booth nestled in the corner of the bar, where the ghostly energy had set up shop many years in the future.

With each step, her full hips swung, and she looked back at Harold who salivated all over the barstool, and motioned a finger at him.
 

“Come on, Harold Storm,” she said.

C
HAPTER
17

The noise picked back up after the two nestled into the cozy booth in the corner. Cheers erupted as the sports commentator’s enthusiasm oozed from the speakers, and then the chatter grew to a steady decibel level. Even in the seventies, Harold thought people had short attention spans. And he shook his head, until the woman sitting across from him smiled, and his attention span vanished fast enough for him to ever remember that he had one.

“So Harold Storm, what are you doing in my
when
?”

The way her lips moved was hypnotizing, and he just stared, not answering her, or registering what words came out.

She laughed. “You’re very cute, Harold, especially with your tongue hanging out like that.”

He jumped, realized he must’ve looked like a begging dog, and quickly withdrew it. Then he straightened up and pulled his gaze away from the beautiful woman.

“S-sorry,” he said. “What was that?”

“I asked why you’re here. A big Protector like yourself.”

His eyes widened, then his spine stiffened to where he couldn’t slouch if he’d wanted to. “How do you know?”

“That you’re a Protector? Or your name? Or the fact I know pretty much everything else about you? Like Marcy, who’s broken your heart, or the love swelling inside of you for your dying partner?” She clucked her tongue. “A man with so many romantic interests shouldn’t be seen in public wooing a pretty lady like myself.”

Harold slammed his fist on the table, a thunk that was lost in the noise of the bar, and the clattering dishes from the restaurant. “Don’t mess with my head, woman. You may be attractive, but if you’re a Siren or something — makes sense that you’re right by the lake, doesn’t it? — I won’t hesitate in killing you if I have to.”

“Relax, Harold. I’m a friend. A Siren would’ve ripped your heart out by now.” A devious smile threatened to curl at the corners of her lips. “If you had a heart.”

“Enough. Get down to business — ”

“Oh my, you haven’t even bought me a drink yet.”

Harold shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose. He pushed himself up. “If you aren’t going to help me, then I’m going to help myself. I’ve got a dying partner and a world full of people to save.”

She gripped his arm. Their skin touched each other, and Harold couldn’t describe the feelings that invaded his brain. It was as if he heard every sound ever made in the history of the world, felt every emotion in one big explosion of feeling, saw the faces of lovers lost and friends gained. He saw the world, saw the universe, looked down upon all of the Realms like a god. His insides swelled with love and lust.

And the way she looked at him let him know that she knew exactly what she was doing.

“Please, Storm, sit. I can help you. I’m a friend. Trust me.”

His voice lodged in his throat. The words weren’t coming.

“Please,” she repeated.

He listened, then said: “What was that?”

“That was everything — that was life.”

Somehow she had lost her sex appeal. And he looked at her the way he might’ve looked at a teacher who changed his life. But nothing had changed physically; she looked like a supermodel.

“Sahara is dying,” he said, finally, looking at her with eyes still lost in space and time.

“I know, I can feel it, but she will be okay. I can fix her.”

“How? We’re in the goddamn Seventies. She could be dead by now. Those things…those green mutants.”

She chuckled. “You’ve met my children? How sweet. I hope they treated you well.”

“What? Children?”

“Yes, they’re called Squeebs. I’ve raised them since they were nothing but tadpoles, so I call them my children.”

Harold stood up again, meaning to leave for real this time. He’d heard it all and all of it sounded like crazy bullshit. Didn’t matter if he lived through a Demon attack, or a sword had shot from his arm no less than two days ago because he drew the line at Squeebs. Mutants — abominations was more like it.

 
He took a few steps away from the booth before she gripped him. But he wasn’t blasted with that swell of emotion. Instead, his vision went dark. That exploding sound filled his head. Dynamite lit by a gunshot.

Time cracked.

Harold felt his body bend in every direction, the skin stretch, brains turn to a pink puddle. His heart might’ve exploded if he had endured the feeling any longer (
If you had one)
but it stopped. And he knelt on the floor of the bar — what used to be the bar. Old green glass dug into his bare knee. The heat enveloped him. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, they were quickly blinded by the luminescent white light that hovered in the same seat a beautiful woman had sat in over thirty years ago.

Harold could sense her presence now. That beautiful woman named Cindy.

“You’re her, aren’t you?” he asked, advancing closer to the ball of white light, which vaguely held the shape of a human being.

The light made no reply, nor any motion. Just hovered.

He inched closer, reached out a hand. The burns were illuminated in the light, reminding Harold how grossly disfigured he actually was. Would always be. He plunged his hand into it. Energy zapped through him. Still no feeling from before, and he wanted it, craved it. Needed to see into the Realms again, like a junkie itching for a score.

But instead all he felt was coldness. And death.
 

He sniffled, felt the tears trying to squeeze from the ducts.

You don’t belong here come home you don’t belong here
, that Shadowy voice chanted inside of his head.

Go home

Come home

We need you

Lead us

“No!”

The feeling inside of his palm had vanished, now he held something mushy, something wet. He opened his eyes, and the screams ripped through his middle, through his throat, then through the quiet of the abandoned bar.

The white light vanished. Before him, sat the corpse from his nightmares. That bloated, pulpy flesh. The lips peeled away from the teeth in an eternal grin. Eyes sunken, somehow all-knowing, and at the same time, dead.

It spoke in the sweet, sensual voice of Cindy from 1977, “Harold Storm, I can help you.”

But she couldn’t help him. He knew it. She was as dead as dead could be, yet she spoke; yet her eye gazed into his very soul.
 

He backed away.

The white light flashed again, blinding. He shielded his face away from the rays. And his vision adjusted, Cindy sat before him, the year 1977, a mirage behind her.

“Is this better?” she asked.

“What the Hell?”

“Thought you’ve seen it all, huh? Well, Harold Storm, you haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. You can see it all, though, if you let yourself. Powerful beings such as us can do lots of things. Oh yes,
lots
. But you must look upon me in my true form, if you want to survive. The year 1977 has came and went — a time of peace — and the year 2016 is upon us and within it, a great darkness comes — ”

“You don’t say?” he said, meeting her eyes — her beautiful, bluer than the Pacific eyes. “That darkness has already came and went, darling. I think we’re a little bit late. Frankly, I don’t care ’cause my partner is dying and there’s still time to save her. The rest of the world — sorry, Realm — I couldn’t give two shits about.”

“Very well, Harold Storm. I will save your partner, but the darkness spilling from the Portal is not the darkness I talk of.”

Her devious smile vanished from her face, replaced by a blank slate of seriousness. Harold felt her glare dig into him like daggers. And he knew what she spoke of without confirmation, but she said it anyway: “I’m talking about the Shadows inside of you, Harold.”