Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) (21 page)

Dark thoughts intruded into his mind. What if that was Harold Storm? And the Demons, the two bumbling idiots only ever thinking with their stomachs, kill him? The Dark One would not be pleased at all. He might even kill Frank. And Frank didn’t want that. Death seemed unnatural now. It seemed like Frank had a purpose.

“Wait!” he shouted.
 

He was too late.

A green creature bucked and swung its arms and legs in, while the other ran towards the water, Caskan hot on his heels.

Frank couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d never seen something so…unnatural and he’d been to the pits of Hell in his mind a few times, had killed creatures of various levels of gross, but this — this mutant was the stuff of vomit-inducing nightmares.

Eyes in the wrong places. Sticky and shiny, dripping with green mucus. Bumps and warts, and mismatched limbs.

Drak squeezed his claws together in one last desperate attempt to quell the beast, and it worked. The mutant stopped kicking, only twitched. Its head hung at an odd angle and its eyes — three of them, by Frank’s count — stared blankly.

“Okay, enough,” Frank said, “we are here not for food.”

“You do not control us, Mortal,” Drak said. Saliva hung from his opened maw, and he pounced on the mutant’s soft flesh.

Frank had to turn away. And when he had, his hands were not quick enough. Hands that normally were steady and gunslinger-like quick fumbled with the shotgun that hung over his shoulder.

And the redheaded girl, now with eyes unclouded by darkness, a bright and burning brown, zeroed in on Frank’s own. Then her unnatural blade came swinging at his head like an axe toward a tree.

He was almost too slow. The metal brushed his hair as he dropped into the sand. Hand tried finding the trigger of the shotgun, but the girl was faster. She cut down on him — three quick swings.

The first two missed, but the second caught the tail of his shirt, ripping the fabric, and touching him with the metal. Not cold metal, but fiery warm. He screamed, eyes bulging.

“Demons!” he shouted, towards Drak who was only a few feet away except too busy feasting on the mutant to realize what was happening. And when he had, he was too late.

Frank writhed in the sand like a dying dog. That touch, that slight brush of metal on his skin had set his head to screaming. The Shadows — they burned with light. It started around the edges, white fire creeping towards the middle, threatening to burn the darkness away, to burn Frank’s heart away.

Sand flew in all directions; the shotgun cartwheeled, landing a few feet away. His vision began to blur, from the dirt in his eyes or from the pain, he was unsure. But a solid thump next to his face momentarily took his mind away from the screaming whispers.
 

It was Drak’s head, mouth covered in green slime, black blood dripping from his severed spinal cord, ripped and jagged like the sleeves of Frank’s bullet hole riddled shirt.

He looked up, saw the redhead, her blade drawn high above her, veins popping from her forehead, from that perfectly smooth skin. Frank never thought such a beautiful creature would be his demise, and part of him was ready to accept it until the Shadows whispered.

Kill her, Franky —
that voice like his father.
Kill her.

He didn’t have much of a choice, didn’t look like he’d have much of a chance either. His hands went up blocking out the fiery sky, trying to block the impending hit.

“I recognize you,” she said.

Caskan. Where was Caskan? He risked a look. The Demon was way out in the black, sludgy water, chasing one of the mutants. How did Frank get stuck with such incompetent Demons? he wondered.

“At the Vampire’s Haven,” she said. “You tried to kill us then, too.”

“That was a different me,” he said.

“I can tell,” she said, narrowing her eyes, looking directly into his. “You got it bad, my friend. I did too. It hurt, I know. All those voices and the Shadows and the dark thoughts. It’s okay, we can fix you.”

“We?” he asked. “You and Harold Storm?”

“Not Storm. He’s not here.”

Frank felt his lungs freeze up, unable to breathe. Not here? But he’d come all this way. He could already hear the wrath from the whispers in his head. The shotgun was nearly within arm’s reach, but the redheaded woman was a Realm Protector. She was not stupid.

He tried anyway, reached for it with the speed of a snake attacking a mouse.
 

Not quick enough.
 

The blade came down, caught a chunk of his right hand. He screamed until his throat felt like it ripped. Looking down, he saw the flesh sizzle and pop, bubble with blackness then turn an odd shade of yellow-orange and disappear. The feeling left along with a sizable chunk of his palm.

“Next time I’ll cut the whole arm off,” she said, a smile on her face.

Frank laid on his stomach, sand filled his mouth as he screamed.

“Think that’s bad? Imagine getting it right into the gut,” she said.

“Sahara dear, what is all the commotion?” another woman said.

 
Frank thought he might’ve been going crazy. Maybe delirium had begun to settle into his mind, but as he peeked up, the woman standing there, dressed in a black gown, looked as if she were a walking corpse. Nothing close to alive.

“Oh, who is this?” she said, a rotten smile on her face.

Frank felt a slight twinge of fear. The skin was dead, the body crippled and hunched, hands like curled-up, dead spiders, but those eyes. They were young and boundless. Immortal. Had seen so much. He knew. Somehow, he just knew.

“Frank King,” the old woman said, answering her own question, nodding. “I have seen him. He is infected. The Dark One’s own puppet.”

“I am my own man,” Frank said, defiance in his voice like a sulky teenager.

Harold Storm was not his enemy; the redheaded Sahara was not his enemy; all of the supernatural beings and cops were not his enemies. No. this old woman — this old Witch — was his enemy. Just looking at her set the Shadows in his mind ablaze. Made him want to explode, to run, to hide, to scream and cry. And right then, he was in no position to do either.

“You may think you are, Frank King. And you may have been gifted with incredible powers because of it. How else would you have been able to see my little safe house? Or taken a shotgun blast to the arm and still be able to move it? Yes, these may seem wonderful for the moment, but you are nothing to the Shadows. They are using you. What was it they promised if you slayed the Realm Protectors?”

He didn’t answer.

The woman bent down, knees popping sickly as she did it. “Was it the promise of bringing back a dead loved one? Riches beyond your wildest dreams? A place at the dinner table of Satan?” She snorted. “Nothing but empty lies.”

Sahara laughed then said: “Did you think you could really kill us?”

“I could’ve killed you both back at the Tree,” Frank said, words shaky, spoken through grinding teeth.

“Why didn’t you?” Sahara asked, now bent down, blade inches away from him. He could feel the heat, the danger right there by his face.

“That was a different me,” he said again.

“Right, and this is the better Frank King, is it not?” the old woman asked.

He ignored her again, at least pretended to.

A dying shriek came from the water. Vicious splashes after it.

“
FREEAT!”
one of those mutants bellowed.

“Ah, my babies must eat,” the old woman said. “Thank you for bringing them food.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled: “There’s fresh meat over here, boys!”

Frank’s stomach lurched. He face planted into the sand again, trying to hide like an ostrich.

“We’ll keep him warm for you!” Sahara said.

“Fine!” Frank shouted. “Stop. Anything but those monsters.”

“Ah, not as tough as he looks,” Sahara said.

“We want what is inside your head, Frank. And you will be better off if we can get it out,” the old woman said. “You’ll be you again.”

“I am me.”

You are us,
the Shadows said.

“Not even close,” Roberta said. “Take him to the kitchen, Sahara.”

“The kitchen?” she asked, puzzled.

“Well, Storm isn’t here to make the venom come after him.” She paused, took a deep breath. “That’s all it really wants is Harold. So we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. And the kitchen has the sharpest knives.”

Frank whimpered, hoping it wasn’t audible. But it undoubtedly was.

Failure.

Rule Number Eight: You fail, you die.

He swallowed hard, then Sahara yanked him up, her Deathblade now gone, but the hilt pressed into his back. Behind them, he could feel the old woman’s smile burning into the back of his head. And he entered the Lake, bar and grill, for the first time in nearly three decades with, once more, another odd group.

C
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31

Chet’s bar was ruined. Somehow it looked worse off than the Lake’s Bar and Grill had. Half of the roof was missing, and that didn’t do much to help, neither did the Demon. Not one like the one he’d seen at the Vampire’s place. This one was much, much bigger and vicious. Like a dinosaur, its heads even bigger than the one Orkane’s sword had been lodged inside of.

A few uniformed officers, though their outfits were tattered, hid between an overturned city bus and the ruined remains of a long-defunct bowling alley where Harold knew most of the crackheads — some friends — used as a house when the ice and snow came to town. The wheels of the bus pointed outwards toward the Demon, and the cops unloaded their pistols into his thick, bubbly flesh.

Each time a gun went off, a burst of black blood sprayed from its armor, and it shrieked like a dying jet engine. Moved like it had a buzzsaw going off in its pants.

Harold watched from the street corner, near a traffic light pole that leaned onto a brick apartment building, the corner of the metal rammed through a third floor window. The street he was on had once been a drug dealer’s paradise. Guys with pants that hung down to their knees, guns stuffed in their coat pockets, and gold chains that shined even on a gloomy, gray day would’ve been breathing down his neck had the circumstance been normal. He wondered where they were now. Wondered if when faced with a monster like the one around the corner, if they had still acted tough.
 

Probably not.

The gunshots stopped almost all at once, filling his ears with a sudden silence — an unnatural city quiet — and brought him back into the moment. Then the Demon roared again, swung a claw into the metal of the bus. He peeked around as glass exploded. The metal crunched and whined. Harold thought of the sounds of a horrible car accident.

And when it moved, he saw, strung up like a frozen carcass in a meat locker, a body hanging by its ankles from a telephone wire. It was limp, unmoving. Most likely dead. Harold’s heart thudded harder. His eyes might’ve been playing tricks on him, or it could’ve been the fear, or the Shadows in his mind, but he swore the body looked a lot like Chet. Wrinkled skin, a thin layer of graying hair. Even the white shirt and the black vest like he was some kind of senile Han Solo. It could’ve been Chet. Had to be Chet.

That’s what he needed as much as it unnerved him.

Be Chet,
he thought.
Let them have already killed him.

The rage would fill him with a strength the sword or the Wolves could not. And he had to ride out the wave of anger as best as he could.

But it never came.

So instead, he gripped the hilt of Orkane’s sword, felt a momentary jolt of power. The Wolves. Howling. The Pack. Him, the Alpha. It gave him strength, but not knowledge. Sure he could go in there guns blazing, but where would that get him besides squashed? It wasn’t much better of a plan than going up against the monster that nearly stood two stories while Harold was blinded by rage.
 

Even if he’d had his Deathblade, he wasn’t invincible. And there was still that slight problem of the Shadows in his brain. He hadn’t heard from them in awhile. Not since acquiring the sword, but they were still there, and no doubt they’d try to sabotage him when he needed to focus the most.

Chet was priority number one.

He took deep breaths.

What if Chet wasn’t there at all? What if he failed? Then the cops would be next.
 

No, that plan wouldn’t work.
 

He would have to draw the Demon away from them, and he was mighty good at getting a Demon’s attention. Hell, that one bashing the bus, making the ground all around him shake, was probably in Hell, watching from the coliseum while Harold sacrificed his key. There had been so many. All those dark and yellow eyes. No doubt the big ones could’ve just blended in.
 

His legs moved, though his brain and heart did everything to try to stop him. In the middle of the ruined street he stood — the chaos surrounding him, broken buildings, death and debris.

Without the rage, there was fear. Without the Deathblade and his real Wolves, there was emptiness.

Loose newspapers blew across the road. His eyes followed them, trying to imagine that everything would go smoothly.

In his hand, the sword weighed about a thousand pounds, but he held it up above his head, near his left cauliflower ear, like a baseball player ready to hit a home run — a grand slam, bring home the win.

“Hey, asshole!” he shouted.

It was enough to stop the creature’s roars.

“Time to die!”
 

And he broke into a sprint.

C
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32

When Frank woke up, the Shadows seemed to be floating right in front of his face. He gasped for breath as if he’d swallowed the toxic lake water — how it burned his lungs, his throat, his nostrils — and someone had thumped his chest until it spewed from his mouth like some kind of black volcano.

The visions in his head had been haunting; the faces had been terrible. But he had recognized them, and that did enough to make him wish the black water had actually drowned him.