Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) (3 page)

Harold’s legs lurched. Part of him wanted to console the poor girl, but another part of him wanted to smack her upside her head. Even teenaged Vampires, in the face of great tragedy, suffered from a bitchy attitude.
 

Sahara’s arm shot out, brushed against Harold’s shoulder, telling him not to bother. She needed to grieve on her own, though Harold thought she might’ve faked the tears, if that were even possible for a Vamp.

“Follow me,” Sahara said. Then, turned to the crowd of Vampires watching Cinder sob on her knees over her father’s dead, sheet-covered body, and said: “We are going to see the King, I expect no more resistance throughout my passage, understood?”

Her blade came out in a flash, and Harold as well as the three picture-perfect Vampires coiled away in disgust. The blade looked melted, like an infected and sticky wound. Sharp edges had turned to serrated and flimsy metal. And the smell — like rotting corpses covered with a pine-scented air freshener — made him gag.

“That doesn’t look so good,” he said.

The Vampire with the sharp jawline made a show of taking a few steps away and plugging his nose, even his fangs bared in his grimace. Seeing those pointed teeth caused Harold’s gut to clench — flashes of Nik with his jaw stretched open, closing in on Harold’s neck came to him in a rush.

His whole body seemed to go numb.

The faint howling came back.

He jammed his eyes closed, edged away from the group until he bumped into the Audi. Shoulders began to curl downward, he clutched at his head, felt his lips moving. But he couldn’t hear what words came out, if any words came out at all. Because a bell tolled inside of his mind with utter, earth-shattering intensity. The roar of the Demons; Charlie’s knowing smile; Beth cackling; Nik’s dark eyes, all hitting him like a sledgehammer to the brain.

Then he felt the ground rush up to meet him, must’ve fallen hard too because his breath whooshed out of him as if someone sucker punched him straight through the lungs.

The words came to him now, shattering the tolling bell.
“Embrace the Shadows. Embrace…”

Sahara hovered above him, blocking out the canopy of knotted branches against the backdrop of a gray sky. She shook him. “Storm, Storm! Snap out of it!”

He gripped her arm, so tight that she withdrew her Deathblade and tried to pry his fingers away.

“We need to get you to the King, now,” she said.

He came back gasping. Like he’d been held under water for an hour. Sahara stood in front of him, working her way at his locked fingers. And when he saw her there in all her radiant beauty — the red hair, almond-colored eyes, he felt normal again.

His fingers released, and a smile muscled its way onto his face.

“Get up,” Sahara said with harshness. And she practically ripped him right up like a rag doll. They made their way into the dark forest, but before they were too far away from the Vampires, he heard one of them say — John, he thought — “If those are the ones charged with protecting this Realm, then my friends, we are all royally fucked.”

C
HAPTER
4

Frank King hadn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours, not since Priscilla’s phone call. He had always had trouble sleeping, that was nothing new. But the nightmares were.
 

They had happened on that very night, as Frank lay tossing and turning in a bed with no sheets on it — mattress totally bare except for an uncased pillow and a thin blanket too small to cover his entire frame. The night was darker than normal, or so it seemed, because it spilled in like some kind of evil oil.

Frank lived in a small cabin in the woods; the only town was about three miles away, but that’s how he wanted it. Away from all those curious, wandering eyes. Away from the empty condolences from strangers. Life out in the woods seemed much simpler to Frank, much less stressful.

But now, staring out of the black window, he wished for someone — anyone — to talk to him, keep him company, get his mind off of the horrible images forever burned into his brain.

That towering forest with its branches stretching up into the heavens like corpses’ hands and the black clouds looming above, the fires burning bright under the layers and layers of darkness. Shrieks of pain.

How he stood there with a face like leather. Shoulders were slouched, neck craned. And those eyes. Those lifeless black eyes. A blade hung from his arm, dark too, but every now and then the flames would catch and dance off of the black metal. Frank and him stood facing each other, neither vying to make the first move. He could feel the tension knotting in his shoulders, feel how heavy his lungs were. Death was in the air.

Horrible dreams were in his head, stuck on repeat like a horrible, but catchy song.

He leaned over to his nightstand, searching around the rough cedar and cold glass of the table lamp for his cup of water. When his hands touched the plastic, the anger of not being asleep at that ungodly, black hour and the sadness of being alone had already done enough to tick him off, and the force was too much. He heard a cup clang off of the hardwood, bouncing, spinning, echoing in the sheer quiet like twenty rounds of gunshots. Beads of water splashed with a heavy smack, some spraying his face like an ocean mist.

He swiped the back of his hand at the drops.

Not water.

His hand stuck to whatever liquid was in the cup as if it were syrup. He brought his pointer finger up and touched a spot on his upper lip, brought it up in front of his eyes and massaged his thumb against his finger pad. Whatever the substance might’ve been, it was certainly not water.

Lack of sleep could’ve been the cause, but it had seemed so real. His free hand found the ball cord of the lamp and he tugged it, bathing the room with too-bright yellow light, nearly blinding him, like a Vampire exposed to the sun for the first time.

He blinked once, twice, three times; each open and close harder than the last, then he stared down at the sticky, red liquid splattered on the floor, dotted on the wall like a man had just blown his brains out. Frank brought his finger closer to his gaze, and shrugged.

Blood. So what?
he thought.
Never seen a little bit of blood before. You’ve slain the most wicked creatures in all of existence and you’re gonna let a bit of blood spook you? Get real, Franky.

He knew it wasn’t real. Just a product of a scarred past and lack of a full night’s rest. He’d shrug it off, go back to sleep — or at least try to — and dream his horrible dreams of a dead son and monstrous trees. Not a big deal, right?

Despite the small voice in his head telling him:
No, not a big deal at all
, his hand visibly shook as he reached out for the cord to the lamp. There was a fine line between dreams and hallucinations, and deep down in Frank’s gut he knew the mess on the floor, pattered on his wrinkled brow and the black rings around his eyes, were neither.

The light cut off with a deep click. And soon the darkness enveloped him. The rough material of the blanket found his face as he tried to wipe away the blood. Tried to forget it ever happened and let sleep take him.
 

It would come, he knew.

And as his eyes began to get heavy, one foot stuck in that dreamworld with the trees and the man who’d killed his son, he’d welcomed it.

Those eyes. Those dark eyes; eyes of malice and evil, loomed over him. He breathed heavy, choked on saliva pooling in the back of his throat.

Soon he was up, coughing, feeling the tight hands of death strangling him. But the room was no longer shrouded in darkness. And a figure stood at the end of the bed, emanating black energy. Electrical clouds wafted off of the figure in waves of smoke. And Frank had to hit himself, first lightly, then the next, much harder, bringing the blood boiling up to his skin.

When the last slap registered and he realized the figure was not in his head and really stood at the end of his bed looking like a pissed-off Shadowy ghost, he scrambled up towards the headboard, kicking his blanket and pillow to the floor, revealing that bare, sweat-stained mattress.

The figure hovered.

His mind reeled, trying to shake the fog of sleep that filled his brain. The crossbow would be in the same place he’d left it almost a year ago when he vowed to retire from Hunting. Right in his tiny study, buried in the small closet behind the huge cardboard boxes filled with old jobs, older receipts; next to another box marked TRAVIS, filled with report cards, macaroni pictures and shaky hand drawn houses, stick figures of fathers and sons holding hands made in the first grade. There the crossbow would lean up against the side wall, collecting dust.

Even if he could get by the Shadow, and somehow get his hands on the weapon, nothing was guaranteed. The formula on the end of the arrow head wouldn’t be potent after almost a year, would it? Besides the thing wasn’t a Dark Wizard or Witch, it was a full-blown spirt from a spirit world Frank hadn’t stepped into yet. Besides, what if it was another one of the creatures who’d killed Travis? The arrow had had no effect on it.

Those dark eyes.

No, his best bet would be to reason with the damn thing, unless of course he couldn’t, and that small voice in his mind told him that he couldn’t reason with a thing like that. Told him that it wanted his soul, his heart, his mind.

But he spoke up nonetheless because it didn’t seem like the spirit would.

“What the Hell do you want?” he asked. There would be no politeness shown to an intruder, that much was true.

It didn’t answer. Just stood there.

“C’mon,” he said, “I’m real tired and not in the mood for this bullshit.”

“You will find the forests,” it said, in a man’s voice, laced with energy.

Frank’s words caught in his throat.

The forests?

“There you will find
him.
Is that not what you want? To find the creature who took your son from you?”

“Y-yes,” he answered, voice cracking.

“You must follow the trail of blood. From the forest, it flows like a river. And from the stream, the Demons drink like parched Wolves.”

“The forest? How do you know about the forest?”

“I know about all, Frank King. I’ve closed my eyes and have seen every image looked upon by man and beast alike; I’ve heard every sound ever made, every sound yet to be made; smelled the stench of death and the sweetness of life reborn. My gaze stretches eons. Your dreams are mine, Franklin Percival King.”

Frank looked away from the creature. Took the heel of his hand and rubbed his eyes with them, his back still pressed up against the headboard, wood creaking with a subconscious attempt at escaping through the wall behind him and into the study where he’d at least have the comfort of a weapon, whether it worked or not. But even subconsciously he knew that way led to a death — and despite all his sadness and depression and the nightmares — he wasn’t prepared to face.

“Where is the forest?” he asked, looking toward the dark light in front of him. He ground his teeth; it was almost too much.

“Gloomsville,” the Shadow said. “The outskirts. Find the Vampires, and you will find
him.”

Somehow, Frank knew that’s where it would be before the Shadow said it.

His father had told him something that had stuck in his brain almost forty years after he said it during one Hunt. They were in the woods in search for a pair of Witch sisters who were so sick of persecution, they’d taken it upon themselves to use their magic to become Mortal. Which was all fine and good until Frank’s father had found out that particular brand of magic required the blood of a pure Mortal, and purest of Mortals are easily found in the playgrounds or the daycares. Virgins. Purebloods.

Kids.

Frank remembered looking upon that kindergarten class. At the impressionable age of twelve, that image had stuck with him all these years. The blood. The melted ABC blocks. The teacher’s carcass strewn near the back door…and the front…and her head over by the kitchen counter. He had nearly puked, but couldn’t risk it in front of his father.

His dad had looked at him then, eyes studying the sweat beaded on his forehead in tiny droplets, and the pale complexion, hunched over posture, and he said:
Chin up, Franky. Shit only gets worse from here.

And he was right. Forty years later and his father’s wisdom never expired.

Hell had its claws firmly in place of Gloomsville’s gullet, and Hell was not something Frank wanted to deal with, something he wasn’t
prepared
to deal with. But somehow he knew he’d have to if he wanted to get revenge for Travis. Wanted to gut the Demon who’d gutted his son.

Those eyes. Black pools submerged in piss-yellow.

Shit only gets worse from here.

That night, looking onto the electrical dark form of energy, Frank had made up his mind. He wouldn’t die unless the Demon died with him.

“The forest. The Vampire’s Haven,” the Shadow said, before vanishing with a splash.

Frank fiddled with the light switch, yanked the cord down nearly hard enough to rip it from its socket. Still, the light flooded the room, and the stain of blood on the hardwood was still there, except it shimmered like flames dancing on crystal.

The Shadow was gone. And Frank sat on the bed in empty silence. A thought rolled in his mind over and over again:
Shit only gets worse from here. The forest. Find the Vampires and you will find
him
.

He’d fallen asleep easily enough after that, not bothering to gather his blanket or his pillow. The nightmares hadn’t left with the Shadow. And he dreamt of a huge oak tree burning with Hellfire, and a river of blood flowing near its roots.
 

Frank smiled as it washed over his boots.

C
HAPTER
5

“The funeral will be at sundown,” the King said.

Harold knelt at the threshold of the door, a few feet behind Sahara who also knelt.
 

The trek through the forest was something of a wonder to Harold, having seen
The Blair Witch Project
at the height of its popularity in the late 90’s, barely a teenager at the time, the utter horror of the movie had never left him. And in the forest with all the dead trees, gnarled branches, and the eerie quiet, that movie flooded back into his brain like war flashbacks and he nearly had to stop and turn back around. Until he remembered how there were a group of Vampires mourning a dead Vampire who he had basically killed. Suddenly Harold didn’t want to head back that way anymore.