Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) (19 page)

He had to follow.

But when he walked into the bar, scanned the room, all he saw was the broken, rotten wood of the liquor shelves, the sloping counter, old broken glass picture frames with photos of smiling families in retro swimsuits lit by younger, happier sunshine, their eyes squinting, their faces tanned and thin. The only light sifted in from a cracked window where Harold had first met Roberta in her true form — that big ball of white light. The sight of it made Harold’s heart sink low, especially since he’d seen firsthand how it’d been, how Chet had been in his youth. Still an asshole, but an asshole with a happier outlook on life. Harold walked toward the bar, placed his hands on the once smooth wood. He pictured Chet back there, pouring drinks, telling funny war stories to the patrons.

“Harold,” Sahara said, voice drifting up from a set of dark steps. He eyed them warily. Anything that was shrouded in darkness and lead downward put Harold on edge.

“Come, come, Storm,” Roberta echoed.

He tapped the bar with a burnt fist and said: “Hope you’re doing alright, buddy,” in a whisper before making his way towards the steps. Chet was a smart guy. He’d survived Vietnam, owned his own business, never got remarried, loved his family, was able to manage a whole gang of vicious bikers without much incident — surely he’d have gotten out of town, even with the blockade and miles of backed-up traffic. If anyone could find a way, it’d be Chet Brunswick.

Down the steps, led to a vast wine cellar. Harold’s eyes bulged. He had to take a few steps back. The basement was the total opposite of the upstairs. It looked much newer, too, untouched by the years of ruin and toxic contact. He was greeted with rich, brown wooden archways, pillars with the faces of stern-faced men and women whittled into them, swords clutched in both hands, pointed down towards the polished black floor — blacker than the snakes that left Sahara upstairs, and the ones in Harold. As he got closer, he realized he vaguely recognized those faces. They were the faces of the Protectors he’d seen many lifetimes ago.
 

A chandelier hung from the high ceiling, burning with a flame that was just a little bit off, and made completely out of ivory, polished and gleaming.

Sahara and Roberta stood hunched over a large table. On it, was a large mass covered by a white sheet.

Fear squirmed in Harold’s stomach, mixed with an odd excitement. He knew what it was, could practically smell the evil on the creature’s skin, could picture those green scales like Demonic braille.

Roberta turned to him, teeth flashing yellow and decayed. “Show us again, Harold.” She ripped the sheet off with gusto as if she were presenting him with a brand new car, which was not the case at all.

The Demon’s head looked even worse now. The skin was a faded green, like dying grass, and ashy as if it would crumble with the slightest touch. Looks could be deceiving, though. Ask Oliver who’d crumbled in a timeline that had never happened. Sahara shuffled away as the sheet fell to the floor, yet Harold was drawn closer, never taking his eyes off the large black bulbs that glowed like a dying fire until the bottles set in the walls whispered to him.

Like the Shadows.

Empty glass bottles that somehow moved, buzzed with untold stories. Roberta must’ve caught his eye as he gazed at them. The wall must’ve contained over a thousand glass wine bottles, corked and empty, stretching into the darkness forever.

“Yes, they will whisper to you,” she said. “It’s best to ignore them. They do not concern you, Harold Storm.”

But they called out his name, of course they concerned him, concerned him about as much as anything, as far as he was concerned.

He walked past the table, completely oblivious to the howls from the blade, which was still in pristine condition, doing much better than the petrified Demon head.

“What are they?” he asked, stopping at the loudest one and heard noises of war — Demon’s shrieking, flapping wings, rusty hinges creaked. Someone called out for
Electus
, for the Savior. Someone called out for Harold Storm.

Roberta nudged him out of the way with her bony hip, slapped his hand with bonier fingers.

“No, that is not for you. Not yet.”

“But…it’s calling for me. They’re screaming. They’re dying!”

“You will save them. Do not worry, however that will not happen unless you take your sword and secure your destiny.”

“Destiny?” he muttered, more like a question.

Sahara looked to him with heavy eyes, on the verge of crying. “They scream?” she asked.

And Harold nodded solemnly.

Roberta clucked her tongue. “That means nothing. Times that haven’t happened yet.”

“Or have they?” Harold asked. He felt his heart race, the anger flare. Those were women and children screaming. Suffering. “And you just changed them somehow.”

She walked right up to him, a short, frail-looking old thing, and looked into his eyes with her neck craned to the ceiling, where the ivory chandelier swayed and eternal fire burned. “I haven’t the ability. What you went through was a simulation, Harold Storm. A trial run. You would not have died had you touched the sword and you were not the rightful owner. You would’ve then, but here, in this now, only a part of you would’ve died with it. Just a fraction. A minuscule amount so little, you’d never notice. Your health wouldn’t have suffered, brain wouldn’t have burned with the fires of Time. No. You would’ve disliked a certain food you’d been accustomed to. Maybe loved a genre of music the old you despised. No one can tell. It is in the past. And wiser beings than I have said the past is in the past for a reason, and it typically stays in the past, does it not?”

Harold couldn’t answer. The Witch’s lips were deader than the rest of her; they couldn’t keep up with her rapid words. It was like watching a badly dubbed foreign film. So he just nodded, hoping she’d shut up, hoping that if she did, it would somehow stop the suffering that invaded his brain.

“Take the sword, Harold.” That dead smile cracked her face in half. “Tame those Wolves. Lead your pack.”

He turned and reached his hand towards the hilt, skin hovering over the intricately carved white handle, made to look like a wave of smooth fur, yet would never slip from his hand once he wielded it. He knew. It would attach to him almost the same way the key had, the way the Deathblade had.

His eyes rolled into the back of his head, showing nothing but yellowish-whites, zigzagged with branching red capillaries. He heard Sahara gasp as he flexed his hand.

Then he heard Chet screaming — screaming as Demon claws closed around the old man’s throat, as a rope strangled him. Heard him gurgling. Begging. Dying.

“Chet,” he said, eyes shooting open, settling back to their irregular darker selves. The bottle was a few rows away from the ceiling and he jumped for it, easily grabbing its neck, but it slipped on the way down.

Roberta made a low grunting noise in her throat; Sahara let out a squeal; both noises mixed with the sound of shattering glass. And the images of a ruined bar, and even worse city, overrun with Demons of all shapes and hideous green and bumpy black colors flashed in front of Harold. He looked on with intense eyes, studying the scene for a moment. There were civilians, people with dreams and families, covered in blood. Beaten and broken. The streets were lined with crumbled buildings, squashed cars. One large pile of chaos, and at the top, with a shark-toothed grin on his face, lips lined with black venom, was Charlie.

A single tear rolled down Harold’s face. And he turned back towards the sword and the lumpy Demon’s head and ripped the blade free. His steps toward the stairs, toward the city were heavy.

The women called after him, but he barely heard it over the pounding pulse in his head because time was running out, and Chet, one of his only true friends, was dying.

C
HAPTER
28

He didn’t remember how long he’d driven the police car, most of the trip was a blur despite keeping the speedometer needle steadily under twenty-five mph. One wrong sneeze and he would’ve veered off course and got lodged between a sea of abandoned cars.

Guesser Tunnel was the quickest way to get to the Lake. Travel through about two miles of brick and asphalt, with the smell of burning rubber and dust leaking through the air conditioner, and you’d be traveling underneath the Erie River.

But the traffic was damn near piled to the roof. Frank shook his head at the sight of the cars with their ruined wheels pointed up, the indented metal like a crushed soda can, the soot-covered windshields.
 

He must’ve been crazy; No-one ever went to Lake Shallows anymore, but now that the city had gone to Hell, maybe the toxic sludge and certain death floating underneath its surface would make it fit right in.

Last time he’d been there, about a decade ago, the Shallows were about as pleasant to look upon as a landfill, because that’s essentially what it had become. Yeah, he had been there in its prime, where the slick suits he called Show Biz had filmed a couple of movies on the pale sandy beach; where the tourists flocked every summer and stayed from sunrise to sunset.

 
Back then, it was a place of hope and fun and summer excitement. Frank may have grown up with a weird father who like his father before him, and his father’s father before him, had dedicated themselves to eliminating the supernatural threats wreaking havoc amongst the normal nine-to-five working stiffs, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t allowed to have a childhood. He had friends back then for Christ’s sake. Friends who played Marco Polo with him in the dark blue water. It might’ve been years, but they were friends nonetheless.

Now Frank couldn’t remember any one of their faces, just the feelings they left imprinted on his brain, and even that was fading. Besides, the thoughts sickened him. He felt love and warmth and a smidgeon of happiness — these fuzzy feelings that felt more alien than anything, that made the black snakes slithering through his body squeal in pain.

Thankfully the tunnel was dark. The old Frank might’ve even thought it was a bit scary. All those cars and not a soul in sight, barely a sound besides the wind whooshing through the cramped space with a minor roar.

He squeezed in between a Mercedes on its side and a crooked Honda, from there he had to shuffle sideways before he had enough shoulder room on the road.

The lights flickered and when they were on, they let off a dull glow, but Frank could see well enough ahead of him. He gripped his right hand onto the railing that led to a small walkway against the white wall. Up ahead the traffic didn’t disperse. It was like looking at the tops of shiny metal dominoes lined up for a few miles, or being the first visitor to pay their respects to a car graveyard.

Where had all of the people gone? There were close to a million people inhabiting the city, maybe more.
 

Then a pungent smell flared his nostrils — a smell of cooked meat. And a flash of burning bodies, piled up higher than the cars came into his mind. The muscles in his face worked into a smile, one he couldn’t help, one that felt wholly unnatural and wrong, but one he accepted.

He still had the shotgun, and the pistol the fat bastard had dropped before tucking tail and running off of the highway and into the woods. Frank could’ve killed him. Hell, he wanted to kill him. Didn’t like cops when he was a normal Hunter, and didn’t like them even more with the venom running through his body. But when the pig — he snickered thinking of the double meaning — let go of the gun, that all too vivid imagery erupted into his mind. Pictures of Demons combing the woods for any Mortal survivors, their claws and teeth as sharp as the hunger pains that rippled through their stomach had brought a momentary flash of life onto his old face.

The fear fueled him. And fear was something he no longer felt. The tunnel would’ve done well to unnerve the old Frank despite the hundreds of monsters he’d killed in the past, but now he welcomed it with opened arms. Chaos caused the butterflies in his gut to go crazy, butterflies he’d imagined as bats instead. They flapped their wings and gnashed at his insides, trying to get out. He started to walk faster, sensed the anticipation. Craved it.

The blood.

The kill

Harold Storm.

Anything to please his Master. Anything to make the voices inside of his head congratulate him on a job well done. Maybe he’d earn a spot by his side when the ones with the dark eyes and darker blades freed him. Oh yes, that was soon. He could feel it. All they’d need was the redhead’s arm, the Shadows told him. They had whispered the entire drive as if the radio was on at the lowest volume, and frankly, he liked it much better than any of the garbage that came from the cop’s speakers.

Officer down on Fifth.

They’re eating his insides. Goddamn it, we need help —

— Help. Need backup in the Fairview Cemetery, the bodies — the bodies are fuckin digging themselves out of the grave. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.

That was before Frank ripped the little black box off of the dashboard and chucked it out of the window. He heard it bounce off of the pavement before striking a car’s bumper with a solid
thump.
The last he heard of those voices. Now he could sit back and enjoy the real ones in his head. The ones that directed him the way a NASA director would through an astronaut’s headset. That’s what Frank was — an astronaut come to claim an alien planet. Stake his black flag into the soft, blood-soaked soil.

And it all started with Harold Storm. Kill the Protector and get his son back. His son — Trevor…or Travis.

Frank stopped on the catwalk. His boot heel crunched a piece of rock into dust. Heart thudded. His son, why couldn’t he remember his son’s name? Knew it started with a ’T,’ but he couldn’t even picture the bastard’s face.

Bastard?

His son was not a bastard. Not in the literal sense. But he loved his son, didn’t he? Or at least he had when the boy was alive.

Suddenly, all of the thoughts had just up and went from his brain, replaced with murder and blood and revenge. Revenge for what? A dead son that he didn’t remember?