Shadow's Awakening: The Shadow Warder Series, Book One (An Urban Fantasy Romance Series) (2 page)

“No,” Glenn said, stroking the knife over her neck again. “I won’t do that. But I will give you to him. And what he’s going to do to you will make all this feel like a day at the beach.”

“Please,” Hannah begged. The warm wet of a tear spilled down her cheek. Every time she thought she was finally numb, they proved her wrong. Glenn leaned close again.

“I love you most when you beg. It tastes so good,” he crooned. He straightened, abruptly businesslike. “You aren’t going anywhere. Don’t try to get out again. You won’t like what I’ll do to you.”

Hannah allowed her eyes to drift shut. His footsteps crossed the floor, thumping steadily down the stairs. Her consciousness faded. It was rare that Glenn hurt her enough to make her pass out, but they hadn’t given her much food lately. Hannah sighed, letting the darkness pull her under. If sleep was her only escape, she wouldn’t fight it.

Sometime later Hannah woke with a start. Overhead, rain danced on the roof as thunder rumbled. She held her breath and waited, listening as hard as she could. The attic stairs creaked. Hannah stiffened, her ears straining. The old farmhouse was a mess of sounds, especially at night. Silence. No one was coming.

Hannah let out her breath, relaxing into the bed. Glenn might be back, but right now she was alone, wearing clean clothes and lying on clean sheets. Hannah often wondered at men who tortured her one minute and changed her sheets the next. She stretched her arms out in front of her, studying them. The damage was clear in the moonlight flooding the room. Bloody knife slices had become long, thin stripes of puckered red from elbow to wrist. She was lucky Glenn had been careful or she might have bled out.

Her body was healing faster. Hannah always healed quickly, but in the past year her system had kicked into overdrive. Small injuries disappeared almost immediately. Larger wounds, like knife cuts that should have required stitches, closed in a few hours. Her cracked jaw would be nothing more than a bruise in a day or two. If only her broken mind would right itself as easily as a broken bone.

The why of it all remained a mystery. So many things had stopped making sense that Hannah didn’t bother to dwell on the details any longer. Her life had changed so many times, she’d given up trying to get her bearings. Every time she thought she had her feet under her the ground shifted again.

It started in the first year of her master’s at NYU. She’d been studying Organizational Psychology, excited about the idea of applying the humanity of psychology to the logic of corporations and institutions. Back then she’d been so enthusiastic. Eager to start her life, her future spread out before her. Getting into NYU had been a lot of hard work, but Hannah had never been afraid of hard work.

The problem began with a whisper. She’d had issues with her hearing since her early teens. Mechanically, her ears were fine. Doctors said her hearing was excellent. The problem was that she heard too much. Whispers, murmurs, faint sounds that led her to ask, “Did you say something?” The sounds were infrequent, not debilitating, so she’d ignored them. In college it got worse. But she’d been so busy she’d brushed it off, thought she was listening to her music too loud.

Not until that first year in New York had the weird little problem coalesced into a serious condition. One day she’d woken up with an odd headache. The annoying whispers were louder, and this time they hurt. Hannah ignored them and went to class. By lunchtime the sensation faded. The following day it was back, stronger than before. The pain had been uncomfortable, but the static sounds were worse. A radio that she couldn’t tune in or turn off. A thousand whispers rustling in the periphery of her mind. It wrapped her thoughts in cotton wool and buzzed, unrelenting, in her ears. As the months passed it grew worse. She began seeing things. People in the streets, shrouded in a muddy red aura that gave off an irritating electrical hum. She thought she was sane. She felt sane. Except when she heard and saw things that weren’t there.

Her grades slipped. She had difficulty sleeping. She missed classes, then exams. Her doctor was unable to diagnose Hannah’s condition. The tests showed extra electrical activity in her brain, but otherwise nothing was wrong with her. It was suggested that she might be suffering from a nervous condition.

Technically, she was on a temporary leave of absence from her program at NYU. That all seemed so distant now. Like a snowball rolling down a steep hill, whatever was eating at her mind had grown worse. Her mother, always by her side, did everything she could to help.

Hannah moved back home, into this very room. A series of low-paying jobs followed. With her mental confusion from the headaches and constant buzzing whispers, she couldn’t handle more than the most basic employment. A few years passed in that confusing limbo, Hannah growing more sick and afraid, her mother grieving for the loss of her daughter’s future.

Desperate for a solution, Hannah had checked herself into an inpatient psychiatric facility, hoping the doctors would spot something new with round-the-clock care. A month later, Glenn showed up and checked her out. That was the moment her entire mess of a life had slid sideways into the surreal.

He’d smelled of cheap liquor, weird in itself. Hannah didn’t remember ever seeing him drink more than a beer. Odder than the alcohol was the fuzzy reddish cloud surrounding him. Just like the auras she’d first seen in New York. Glenn’s body had begun to give off that same humming vibration. Even before he’d started to hurt her, the humming made her want to push him away. Anytime he was near her, she got that same sensation, like invisible bees swarming and buzzing around her, just out of sight, making her skin crawl. Creepy.

Groggy from the meds she’d been given and distracted by the changes in her stepfather, she hadn’t fully registered Glenn pushing her up the stairs to her room and locking the door until it was too late to stop him. That evening, he’d told her that her mother was dead. Heart attack. Stress. Hannah hadn’t missed his implication. She’d killed her mother with worry.

Hannah’s already shaky world crumbled. Her mother had been her closest friend, her support system and confidant after they lost Hannah’s father. Amy Green had loved her husband and daughter fiercely. When her husband died she’d turned all that love on Hannah. Amy believed in Hannah without reservation, even when Hannah had gotten sick and the doctors thought she’d had mental problems. Amy was convinced it was something else. The doctors just weren’t looking hard enough. She’d been Hannah’s champion and biggest cheerleader.

When Amy married Glenn, during Hannah’s first year in college, Hannah had been happy for her mother. Glenn wouldn’t have won any prizes in the looks department, but he was sweet and clearly devoted to Amy. Glenn had fit well enough into their little family. Now, with her mother suddenly dead, her stepfather had morphed into a different person.

Drunk more often than not. Angry all the time. Looking back, she remembered the red cloud around him getting darker and more distinct even as it pulled closer to his body. He’d been standing in a wispy pink cloud in the beginning. By the end it was a thick red line drawn in bloody permanent marker.

The annoying hum had strengthened until it felt like standing a hair’s breadth from high voltage power lines. One day there were locks on her bedroom door and bars on the windows. Then the knife. Soon after, the other men moved in. All of them like Glenn. Outlined in the same hard red aura, they buzzed and hummed like an invisible swarm of bees. They liked to hurt her, seemed to feed from it.

Hannah knew she’d have to try to get away again. Her room was on the third floor with barred windows and a door secured by three keyed deadbolts. But this wasn’t the first time Glenn had hinted that worse was still to come. Passive acceptance might be easy, but it would just earn her more pain in the end. It might not be smarter to fight, but it was the only way she could live with herself. She wasn’t going to just lie there while they broke her into pieces. Exhaustion crept back in. The rain on the roof thrummed a soft rhythm, reminding her of early spring nights in front of the fire with her mother. Hannah let her tired body carry her off to sleep, wrapping her mind in the memory of her mother’s love.

The rain was a freezing pain in the ass. It dripped down the back of his neck, sending icy fingers sliding along his spine. Conner paced the dark city street and tried to pay attention to his work. Patrol was a mixed bag. Some nights it was fun. Some nights it could be exciting. Occasionally it was even dangerous. But every once in a while it just plain sucked. Not that he was complaining.

Walking these streets, protecting humans from Vorati demons, wasn’t just Conner’s job. He’d been born to it, raised with this one purpose in mind. He was a dedicated soldier, one who did his duty to the very best of his ability. For a brief time he’d even been a trainer at the Academy. After a few years he’d requested a transfer back to the field. At just over a hundred and fifty years old, Conner thought he was too young to be training their children. He belonged on the front lines of their secret war.

Not for the first time, Conner wished he could switch places with Kiernan. On a night like this his closest friend had undoubtedly managed to meet his quota early and was likely already relaxing in the dry sanctuary of their favorite bar. Kiernan wouldn’t shirk his duty, but he had the Devil’s own luck when he needed it. He was the kind of guy who found a quarter just before the meter ran out. Conner would bet that Kiernan wasn’t freezing in the rain, methodically covering his section, street by street, patiently waiting for his targets. All Warders were born with an internal magnet that pulled them to the demons they were created to destroy. It wasn’t all that accurate, but it at least gave them a hint as to where they’d find their quarry. Conner’s wasn’t pulling him toward jack shit. Even the Vorati weren’t out on a miserable night like this.

As if to prove him wrong, his awareness kicked into gear. Prickly heat spread across his skin, firing his instincts. Somewhere ahead of him there was a Voratus demon. Finally. Conner picked up the pace, concentrating on the faint pulse of demon in the air. A pained squeak floated out of the alley ahead on his right. Then a thunk, followed by dragging sounds. He eased up to the mouth of the alley. His back to the wet brick, Conner tilted his head around the corner.

There, at the dim end of the narrow alley, was the Voratus. He was a big sucker, at least Conner’s height of six foot three. Could be even taller. And wide. Conner’s well-muscled frame and broad shoulders made him bigger than most of the men he passed on the street. Bigger than most of the other Warder soldiers. The body of the Voratus he’d found made a linebacker look small. It had a massive chest, its shoulders rounded with muscle and thick, beefy thighs. Its dinner plate-sized hands were wrapped around the neck of a woman. Through the patter of rain, Conner heard her whimper in fear. The Voratus sank its head into her neck, inhaling the intoxicating scent of her terror.

Watching them feed always turned Conner’s stomach. Everything had to eat. Conner got that. He liked a thick steak himself and he didn’t spare much thought for the cow. But the Vorati were able to feed on any emotional resonance. They could have nourished themselves on joy, love, pleasure. Instead, they preferred pain, fear, and anguish.

In their natural state, they were incorporeal. As spirits, they drifted through the world, soaking up negative emotion to abate their hunger. That was never enough for them. The demons survived in spirit form. In a human host, they thrived. The worst part was that the humans invited them in.

A Voratus couldn’t possess a human with a strong soul. Someone kind, who cared for others, was impervious to the Vorati. There was nothing for the demon’s spirit to stick to, no way in. But give the human a little moral weakness to crack their soul and the Vorati could wedge their essence inside. Sometimes a series of bad decisions was all it took to create fissures big enough for a Voratus to gain traction. Once the Voratus began its assault, it was almost impossible for a human to push it out.

The figure before him might not have been a terrible man. Maybe he gambled too much and lost the grocery money. Skimmed money at work. That would take longer, but the demon could have gotten in. Or he could have been worse. Hitting his wife, or his kids. Dealing drugs. Those humans went fast. The demon got a foothold and began to whisper to the host. Nudging them further down dark paths.
Hit her again, she deserves it. No one will notice if you take more.
The human never knew his descent into depravity wasn’t his own idea. Bit by bit, the Voratus consumed the host’s soul until nothing was left. If it could destroy family and friends along the way, all the better. What remained was the creature at the end of the alley.

A human body jacked up on a demon spirit. Stronger, faster, harder to damage. Eventually the power of the well-fed demon would literally burn the host’s body away. Then the process would begin again with a new victim. The weaker demons could keep a host for decades. Older Vorati might only be able to inhabit a body for a few years. By the looks of him, vital and strong, this host was new enough to be in good shape, but old enough that the former occupant was gone.