Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) (8 page)

It was the end.

He shook the thought away, then took a look at the battered Protector in his arms, and remembered the fact that he might not be the new Harold at all.
 

The Protectors were weak; the evil, strong.

And here Harold stood the sole survivor of a battle he would never be ready to face.

“The G-Grand Witch,” Sahara said. “We m-m-must see the Grand Witch.”

Harold’s ears perked up. Her voice sounded as if Death had a firm grip around her ankles and was dragging her down, but the softness was still there. And in the dead — literal dead — silence of the forest, it was a gift from the Heavens.

“Where, Sahara? Where?”

“The Lake — sh-sh-she lives on the Lake.”

“What lake?” Harold asked, but her eyes were already fluttering closed, the whites showing. Her lips parted once more, but only a rattling wheeze came out, followed by a streak of black leaking from her mouth, which he had set her down to wipe away, then scooped her back up as fast as he could. Though his arms cried out in protest.

But the few leaves that hung from the great tree hundreds of feet up into the dark sky rustled, and a few birds — or possibly bats — flapped their wings as they fled. A roar rippled through the entire girth of the trunk, a satisfied, almost pained roar.

The Demon had to have been through with Frank now, and Harold didn’t want to hang out and see that horrible face again, especially if it was smeared with the blood of what might’ve been a potential friend.

No, he didn’t want that at all, and he headed for the Audi, mumbling to whatever gods would listen, praying that the thing was still in one piece and he could stay conscious long enough for him to get to whatever lake his delirious partner spoke about.

The only lake close by was Lake Shallows. Years of pollution had made it less of a lake and more of a toxic waste dump now. A person with as much gumption to dub themselves the Grand Witch couldn’t have the nerve to live at a place like that. Could they?

He didn’t know, but Harold Storm was prepared to find out if it meant saving Sahara.

C
HAPTER
11

The sports car roared to life.
 

Harold felt the engines rumble under the tight grip he had on the steering wheel. Sahara laid in the back, mumbling. She had felt so hot as he strapped her in, using all three seat belts, because the way he intended to drive from that forest was that of a drunk Nascar driver.

But he was so exhausted.

He’d done so much, and as he backed down the worn path until the trees opened up and he could swing the car around one-eighty degrees, his ruined eyelids grew heavy. He wondered if he could still sleep at all. How did one do that without eyelids?
 

Awkwardly, he supposed.

The air conditioning was on full-blast. He’d noticed an increase — maybe a few degrees — since leaving the terminal, since the Portal had been opened.

The Portal, right. He’d forgotten about the Portal. What with the Vampires nearly killing him, then the Demon, and a giant bat-freak, and then some crazed old man…oh, and Sahara descending into a buzzing delirium and his own dark thoughts.

(You’re not supposed to be here.)

The Portal was the last thing on his mind, though it probably should’ve been the first.
 

He pulled out onto the highway, engine roaring, a/c blasting, and the radio tuned at a low volume (a reporter talked of the end of days and he wound up switching to an FM station to get the latest pop hits, because if Hell was going to come to Earth, it was going to arrive while listening to some teenaged asshole with little musical talent wearing jeans skinner than their ambitions).
 

The once deserted highway still looked deserted, just a different kind of deserted. Post-apocalyptical, perhaps.
 

A few cars had piled up on the shoulder near an exit into Flaxton Township, and up ahead he could see the distant glow of red taillights, but that must’ve been a few miles up. Didn’t matter. He meant to catch them and pass them if he had the chance.

But his phantom eyelids were so heavy; he might not get that chance.

The car swerved, ran over the bumps off to the side near the divider, jolting him back into full consciousness. Consciousness that didn’t last long, and he had to turn up that wretched pop song.

A sign told him an old Motel 8 was a few exits ahead, and he’d really debated pulling off towards it, but in the end settled for their parking lot. Because, like Sahara said, being a Protector didn’t mean barrels of money. Really all it meant was some pain, seeing scary some scary, unnatural shit, and a burnt skin suit.

The Motel 8 looked like it had been ransacked, but he got the feeling it always looked like that — end of days, or not. The brick was a washed out pink. Blinds hung in the windows crookedly with missing strips. The glass of the front door was cracked. Motel 8, high above the road, buzzed and flickered.

He parked between an old phone booth, one that had not been used since the first Nokia dropped, and a towering street lamp that, like the phone booth, no longer had any use.

He left the car on, the rumbling soothing him, rocking him to sleep like a baby.

Just fifteen minutes. A quick cat nap.

“The Lake…the Lake,” Sahara mumbled, but as Harold’s eyes got heavier, her voice faded.
 

And then he could no longer keep whatever was left of his eyelids open. And she’d have to wait. A power nap, that’s all. Then they could find the Lake. If it existed. He didn’t think it did. Could’ve been death babble — knew it was death babble.

The power nap, intended to be fifteen minutes, turned to an hour, and the sky rippled with flames. Outside, the temperature went from a cool, and calm seventy-five to a solid ninety degrees, and at that time of year on the cusp of Gloomsville, those numbers were unheard of.

Yet Harold Storm slept through it all like an infant, and as he snored in the Realm of Reality, he screamed in the Realm of Dreams.

A baby crawled towards him through the black muck.
 

Where was he at? A minute ago, a pop singer sang songs about how he’d ‘never leave you, girl.’ A sound of splashing water came to him, and he jumped. But the eyes, the glowing eyes approached. Eyes he’d somehow recognized.

Marcy’s eyes.
 

But Marcy was no baby, and Harold owned no time machine. The nose, too. He recognized that nose. It had stared back at him every time he’d looked in the mirror — and how vain he used to be, before all of the burns and the blisters and the festering wounds.
 

It was his nose, though much smaller and maybe a little cuter.

He reached at the crawling child, the one he knew to be his own. Valentine, he wanted to name her, but Marcy wouldn’t have it. Back in the throes of one of their heated fights, back in a simpler time, one Harold had not recognized until now. Until the responsibility and the pain cracked his shoulders. The weight of the worlds, the weight of the Realms snapped his spine.

The child balked, but the eyes didn’t.

“Come here,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

He longed for the child’s touch, for something to remind him of the real world and break through the stuff of nightmares.

“But you already hurt me, daddy,” the child said — Valentine, screw Marcy, the baby was named Valentine.

“No, no, I didn’t. It wasn’t my fault, it was your mother’s,” he said.

“I have no mother.” The voice broke into a sinister tone. “A mother does not murder their unborn.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Harold repeated.
 

He shook his head, felt the tears coming down his cheeks, wet and hot. Then raised a hand to brush them away, felt the smoothness of his skin — the wholeness.

“So be it,” the child said.

And it was a child no more.

Now it stood, as a Shadow, hunched over with its jagged outline.

Harold felt the fear seize him. He stood now, too, backing away into the darkness beyond him, not sure where it would lead. A hand struck a wall, cool and rocky, then his other hand reached out behind him, only the hand didn’t exist. And he touched nothing, took another step.

His heart nearly exploded as he plummeted into the abyss, as he looked up and saw the twisted face of a baby looking down at him like a full moon.

Soon the face grew to the size of a speck. Colder air rippled through him, and he stopped, landed in a lake with a hollow splash. Bubbles flew from his mouth, trying to escape to the surface too. The icy feeling froze his brain, and for some reason he opened his mouth to breathe — or scream — and his eyes followed suit.

But there was no more blackness. Only the crystal clear blue of water. And the coldness left him, replaced by a tropical current.

He had no longing for breath, no longing for answers. He had found the Lake, and Sahara was right to talk of it in death. It was so pleasant, so relaxing — a vacation for the mind and the body — no more dead children, no more Shadows.

He’d enjoy it while he could, enjoy it before he was back in Reality’s Realm, fighting for his life. But nothing good ever lasted long, especially for Harold Storm.

Because a corpse floated towards the surface, a thick metal chain swayed lazily from the its ankle. The skin looked like wet toilet paper, milky-white and bloated. Bits of flesh hung from the face, swayed with the current. A wild mane of white hair, one that could only belong to an old woman — or an old rock star — pointed towards the surface.

Harold screamed again, kicked his hands and his feet to try to swim away, but as he looked down he saw his ankle had been clamped, too. And the woman’s corpse had a subtle smile on her face.

Her lips didn’t move; a voice struck his mind: “The key, Harold. Find the key.”

“I don’t have it,” he answered, and somehow his voice came out perfectly clear as if he wasn’t chained to the bottom of large body of water.

“I do, in my shirt pocket. Come closer.”

Harold hesitated. The dead eyes just stared at him blankly. He must’ve been going crazy. Must’ve been accepting that fact, too, because he swam closer, or as far as the chain would let him go, which was about a foot too close to the body.

She might’ve once been pretty a hundred years ago, might’ve had the ghostly features of a Russian supermodel if the water had not taken her skin and turned it into pulp.

His hand reached out to the woman, snaking through her floating arms towards the breast pocket, feeling like the woman would change into the face of an unnatural baby and bite his fingers off at any moment, feeling the fear wrenching at his insides.
 

She didn’t. Instead, she just bobbed, rocked back and forth with the same dead look on her face.

His fingers dug into the pocket, and he felt the unmistakable metal between them. The jagged edge of a key, the loop of a keyring, and a hard plastic keychain. He pulled it free, and saw it as clear as day. The keychain had a crudely drawn wave on it and a little stick figure surfing, with a wave at his back. The words read: THE LAKE, Bar and Grill, FIRST DRINK’S ON US!

Was this the Lake Sahara spoke of?
Harold thought.

Sahara.

A hint of consciousness washed over him. He was asleep, but not. Half awake, stuck in Dream’s Realm, one foot in Reality’s.

He had forgotten about Sahara. How long had he been gone? She might’ve already been dead now, all because Harold wanted a nap. But it was either that or fall asleep behind the wheel and kill them both.

The chains jingled when he jerked because the woman’s eyes weren’t so dead anymore, and neither was her hand as it gripped his wrist.

The corpse smiled a bloody smile, waters worms hung from her teeth like question marks.

“The girl will be alright,” she said. “Bring her to me.”

But Harold thrashed, too frightened to comprehend the words. The grip grew tighter and tighter until he feared his bone might snap. And the gimp arm would just float in the current like a plastic bag — useless to him. He had the key, and he was not the old Harold.

“You don’t belong here,” the woman said. “I see it in your eyes.”
 

She pulled him closer. Somehow under the water, he could smell the stench of death, that rotting, sickening sweet smell of finality and the cedar of a casket.

Her smile grew wilder; worms floated out of her mouth.

The key, he fumbled the key. She squeezed so hard that the blood had stopped pumping through his body. His head swelled like it threatened to blow, skin turned a sickening shade of red and purple, reminding him of his true self.

He tried to raise his ankle, tried to find the keyhole, but whatever he was chained to was much too strong. And the woman’s mouth closed in on him. An alarm shrieked inside of his body; someone spoke:
sink or swim.

“Come see me, Harold Storm. I can make the girl better. I can help you find your true purpose. No longer is Harold Storm a failure.”
 

She let go of him, and he wasted no time scrambling down to the ankle bracelet around his leg. The key went right in and there was a satisfying
click
— a click of freedom — and he shot up, straight to the surface.

“See you soon, Harry,” the corpse said.

He woke up gasping in the driver’s seat of the Audi. Stale drool dried on his chin. He raised his hand to wipe it away, and felt the roughness of his burnt, but healing, skin.

Just a dream, Harry.
Nothing to pull your hair out about.

Unsurprisingly, his fifteen minute power nap wound up being about forty-five minutes longer than expected. He leaned over the middle console to look at Sahara. She seemed bad still — sweaty forehead, skin too pale, and cheeks that had begun sink in — but she was alive, and that was all that mattered.

He turned the overhead light on the lowest setting and brought a hand to her face. A stream of water spilled from his sleeve, and his heart froze — just stopped beating completely.
 

His brain didn’t tell him to, but he did anyway, and reached into his trench coat’s pocket. Fingers closed around a key — and not the one he needed at the moment.