Shadow's Awakening: The Shadow Warder Series, Book One (An Urban Fantasy Romance Series) (13 page)

“That’s what was happening to you. The headaches, the inability to concentrate. All of that was normal. Except that you should have been trained to handle it.”

Hannah stared at Conner in shock. Hearing that she was part of a mystical race of demon fighters was so bizarre it hadn’t sunk in. Probably because she didn’t really believe it. But Conner saying that her “insanity” was normal, that was too much to hope for.

“So there’s nothing wrong with me?” Hannah was appalled to hear her voice shaking. She cleared her throat and tried to get control of herself.

“Nothing that isn’t normal for an adult Shadow who doesn’t have even basic shields. I’m surprised you’re not in worse condition. It makes me wonder what your talent is. You’re definitely not an empath or you’d be strapped to a bed in a psych ward somewhere. Shadows are extremely powerful, but your minds make you vulnerable. Do you want cream or sugar?” Hannah looked up to see Conner gesturing toward her with a stoneware mug.

“Both please,” she said. “I don’t think I’m powerful. Wouldn’t I know if I had power?”

“Maybe not.” Conner returned to the table. The mugs hit the surface with a heavy clunk, the coffee inside steaming and fragrant. Another thing Hannah loved. She’d missed coffee during her captivity. The caffeine would keep her awake, but she couldn’t turn down the offer of freshly brewed coffee. Wrapping her hands around the warm mug, she took a sip and let the creamy, strong drink slide over her tongue. Conner made good coffee.

“How do you know I’m a Shadow?” she asked. “Do I have a mark or something?” Conner laughed.

“No, no mark. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I could recognize a Shadow on my own. Like I said, Warders don’t have anything to do with Shadows most of the time. Shadows are forbidden. I’d never spoken to a Shadow before last night when an Oracle called and told me I needed to find an untrained Shadow who was being held captive and tortured. To be honest, I didn’t think it was legit, but there’ve been some weird things going on lately, so Kiernan and I decided to check it out anyway. And there you were.”

“But how do you know it was me? Maybe the Oracle was wrong.” Hannah was afraid to trust Conner’s story. After all of her losses, it was too much to hope there might be answers for the madness her life had become.

“Your energy is different from a regular human’s,” Conner said. “I knew as soon as I saw you that you were a Shadow.”

“So why have my headaches gone away? Unless it was Glenn causing them and they went away when he died. Was he a demon? Until my Mom died he was a sweet guy. Was he faking it?”

“He was a Voratus.” At Hannah’s confused expression, Conner clarified. “Vorati is plural. One of them is a Voratus. And he probably was a normal guy when he met your Mom. When the Vorati lost their bodies they had to find another way to feed from humans. Since they couldn’t consume flesh any more, they focused on feeding from emotions. All they need is to be near a human in pain, but they prefer to infect human bodies and inflict the pain themselves.”

“Glenn was infected by a demon?” Hannah asked, taking another long sip of the coffee. After everything he’d done to her, it was hard to find sympathy for Glenn. Unless the creature who’d hurt her hadn’t actually been Glenn.

“He was infected,” Conner said. “All the way. What we call a fatal infection. The Voratus would have used his grief over your mother’s death as a way in. You said he was angry and drinking a lot?” At Hannah’s confirming nod he went on. “They need moral decay to get a foothold. When the morals start to go, it weakens the bond between the soul and the physical body, leaving gaps. The Vorati work their way in, pushing their victim to worse and worse acts. Once they have a hold, they consume the victim’s soul and take over the body. If we catch the infection early enough, we tag the victim with a spell designed to alert the Shadows. The Shadows track the tagged victims and remove the infection. Most of the time the healed human just gets reinfected. But if the infection is too far gone, we have to kill the victim to get the Voratus. I doubt there was anything of your stepfather left.”

“Does being near Vorati cause the problems I was having? The static feeling and the headaches?”

“I don’t know,” Conner said. “I wish I knew more about Shadows. You’re not exactly a field of study for Warders. We’re not encouraged to ask about your kind. I think you should be able to see an aura around the infected. But I’ve never heard of Vorati causing headaches. I guess it’s possible. I was thinking more that the static and pain were caused by electrical interference you haven’t been trained to handle. That’s what Shadows do—they channel energy—and they have to be carefully trained from a young age to handle it correctly.”

“So why would it have gone away so suddenly?” Hannah knew she was beating the question into the ground, but the reversal of her condition wasn’t very comforting if she didn’t know
why
it had gone away. If she didn’t understand and she got sick again, she’d be right back where she’d started.

“When, exactly, did the static go away?” Conner asked. “Was it all at once, or did it taper off?”

“I think…” Hannah closed her eyes to focus on the memory of the events of that morning. Her head had been fuzzy and pulsing with pain before the fight, then she’d been distracted by killing Glenn and getting out of the house. “It started to feel better when I was under the bed. I was watching you fight him and I realized the pain and the fuzziness were fading.”

“Before Glenn died.”

“Yes,” Hannah answered. “Before Glenn died. So it wasn’t Glenn.”

She rolled that idea around. The answer slowly came to light. She’d been wedged under the bed, watching Conner and Glenn fight when she’d realized her mind had cleared. But hadn’t it started to feel better before that? Right around the time Conner had come pounding up the stairs.

“It was you,” she said, the realization becoming obvious. “You were what changed. My head started to feel better right before you came in the room.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Conner said. “How would I have any effect on how your head feels?”

“I don’t know. None of this makes sense to me. But I remember that part clearly and you were the thing that changed. I haven’t been away from you since.” Unease chilled her blood. Hannah didn’t know how Conner had affected her, but the more she thought about what had happened, the more certain she was that he was responsible. Maybe he had some kind of spell? He’d mentioned that they used spells. It had to be something.

“I don’t think it’s me, Hannah. But let me think about it. We can try to test it out tomorrow and see if we can isolate why your head is so much better,” Conner said. “This is why you should be with the Shadows. They’ll be able to help you—get you the training you need, figure out what kind of abilities you have, that kind of thing. I only brought you here to get you somewhere safe.”

“Oh.” Hannah deflated. Conner was going to pass her on and disappear. She wasn’t ready to lose the first safe person she’d found since her life had imploded. Especially since she was pretty sure he had somehow brought back her sanity. “When are you going to take me to them?”

“That’s up to you.” Conner studied the coffee in his mug before he took a long drink. “Protocol is to bring you to my handler and have her call in the Shadows to pick you up. Not that this happens often, but if it does, that’s how we handle it. I should have brought you in already.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“The Oracle who called told me to keep you somewhere safe for a few days. He said you’d be in great danger if I turned you over right away. So it’s up to you. I can bring you in now, or in the morning if you want. It would get you to your people that much faster and get your questions answered. Or you can hang out here for a day or two, until we hear from the Oracle that it’s clear to bring you to your people.”

“Are you going to get in trouble?” Hannah asked. She wanted to stay here in this cozy cabin, tucked in the woods with the soft bed and warm food and Conner’s company. She didn’t want to head back out into the world to meet strange people and face her new future. She knew she’d have to do that eventually, but not yet. As if in answer to her question, Conner gave her a wolfish smile.

“I’m not worried about getting in trouble. They won’t do anything to me that I’m afraid of. If you want to stay, we’ll stay.”

“I want to stay,” Hannah said.

“Then we’ll stay,” Conner stood and picked up the remaining dishes on the table. “Did you want more to eat?”

“No.” Hannah put a hand over her now comfortably full stomach. “I’m good.”

“Then I think you should head to bed. It’s late and we need to spend some time tomorrow trying to find out what’s going on with your head. It might help if we can figure out what you can do.”

“I can’t do anything,” Hannah said.

“We’ll see,” Conner said. “I think you’ll be surprised.”

Hannah lay in her temporary bed cocooned in decadent warmth, listening to the fire crackle in the great room. The occasional sound of logs being adjusted told her Conner was still awake. She’d been right—the coffee was keeping her up a little. But even with the hit of caffeine in her bloodstream she could feel her eyelids drooping.

Just the idea of sleeping in safety was seductive. Hannah knew she should stay on guard. As honest as Conner seemed, she didn’t know him well enough to trust him. But the more time she spent with him, the harder it was to believe that he was playing her.

Her first sight of Conner had filled her with terror. He’d been a blur of knives, blood and brutal skill as he’d fought Glenn. The thought of all that violence being turned on her should have had Hannah climbing out the window of the cabin, not cuddling farther beneath the covers of the bed. Maybe she was being lulled into a false sense of security, but the kindness in Conner’s eyes couldn’t be discounted. It could be his face—those strong cheekbones and his warm smile. Or his tall, muscled body. It had been a long time since she’d looked at a male and seen a man. Longer since she’d wondered what a man looked like under his clothes. Those strong hands, his broad chest. She’d bet he looked delicious naked. With a jolt of surprise Hannah realized she was getting warm. And not from the pile of quilts.

This wasn’t the time to linger over an attractive face and a hot body. Hannah smiled as her eyes slid shut. She shouldn’t think about how soft Conner’s lips looked or the long, muscled length of his legs. Never mind. Just because she liked looking at him didn’t mean she had to do anything about it.

The next morning, Conner listened to a recorded voice tell him the wireless customer he was calling was unavailable. The voice invited him to leave a message—an option he’d taken once already that morning. Either Zach was away from his phone or he was avoiding Conner’s call. Conner should be worried. Stuck in the mountains with an untrained Shadow and no idea when it would be safe to deliver her to her people. Or if the threat was real.

The Oracle hadn’t exactly offered details, just said Hannah would be in danger if Conner brought her back to the city. If the Vorati had any way to track her, she wasn’t safe anywhere. Not to mention the fact that Conner was forbidden contact with a Shadow. He’d brushed off her concern the night before, but the truth was that he had no idea what his people would do to him when they found out he’d been alone with a Shadow.

There was no gray area. Warders were barred from any contact with Shadows. The few exceptions didn’t apply to his current situation. His directive was clear. Turn her in to his handler and let Alexa take care of contacting Hannah’s people. Under no circumstances was he supposed to bring the Shadow out in the middle of nowhere and hole up together in a romantic cabin.

So what the hell was he doing? For the first time in his adult life, he was deliberately going against Warder laws. And for what? A woman—a Shadow—he didn’t know? Conner stared blindly into the woods surrounding the cabin. If he was caught with Hannah he’d have no reasonable explanation for his behavior. Worse, he didn’t care.

Hannah had knocked him flat when she’d come out of her room the night before. She’d stood on the threshold of the great room balanced on the balls of her feet, hesitant, biting her lower lip. At the sight of her teeth cutting into that soft, red lip, Conner had wanted nothing more than to replace it with his own. To nip her plump lips before he soothed the bite with his tongue. To sink into her mouth, taste her, slide his fingers into the damp fall of her long, sunset red-gold hair. Need had barreled into him so fast he’d been struck breathless.