The Dark Shadow of Spring (20 page)

“What now?” Victoria asked.

“We should all get home before our parents start to worry,” Alex said.

“No,” Victoria said, her eyes fixing on Alex. “I mean, what do we do about the Shadow Wraith now? Do we go back to the cave as the ghosts told you?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said, looking around at the others.

“Together,” Ben said. “We should go together.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Nina said.

“We need to know what the gorp is going on up there,” Daphne countered.

“Daphne is right,” Victoria said. “If the Shadow Wraith is trying to escape from the cave, we need to know how close it is to achieving its goal.”

“Well, sure,” Clark said. “But Nina’s right about it being dangerous. People aren’t disappearing for no reason. And we don’t want to disappear ourselves.”

“You’re all right,” Alex said. “We do need to know what’s happening up at the cave, and it is too dangerous to go up there ourselves.”

“You’re going to tell Dad?” Nina asked, sounding incredulous.

“No, of course not,” Alex said, his best I-know-exactly-what-I’m-doing smile filling his face. “But I think I know a way to see what’s happening at the cave without actually going there. I just need to get to bed.” He looked around at the faces of his companions and was not entirely surprised to see only frowns.

Chapter 17: Astral Assignation

In the end, Alex had agreed that it was too dangerous to try astral travel to the cave without some precautions. Nina assumed the task of watching over him while he made the journey in his astral body. This way if something went wrong, she would hopefully be able to wake him. Alex had his doubts about the effectiveness of the plan, but knew sharing his doubts would only decrease the chances of everyone agreeing to it, especially Nina.

So, sometime after Alex’s parents had gone to bed, Nina quietly opened the door to his room and slipped inside. Five minutes later, she sat cross-legged on the foot of his bed wrapped in a blanket and staring at him.

“Anything yet?” she whispered.

“No,” Alex whispered back. “And stop talking to me. I have to kind of fall asleep for it to work.”

“So kind of fall asleep already,” Nina said with a pout. “Would it help if I hit you in the head with something heavy?”

“Shush,” Alex said, closing his eyes again. He could hear her heavy breathing, punctuated with sighs of boredom, but his sister remained quiet. Alex focused his mind on the cave in the mountains as he slowly counted backward from a hundred. He wasn’t certain it would work, that he could force himself to astral travel, but he hoped it would. If not, he would probably have to heed the advice of the ghosts in the cemetery and go visit the cave in person. He was still unsettled by the events at the cemetery and his mind lost focus several times. Why had the Mad Mages followed them? Were they really just curious about what was happening in the town? And why had the ghosts tried to warn him? What role did ghosts have in all that was taking place? Did they fear the Shadow Wraith as much as the living?

The cave. Focus on the cave. Eighty-nine. Eighty-eight. The cave. Eighty-seven. Eighty-six. The cave. The cave. Eighty…

In an instant, Alex’s eyes were open and he was standing in the small clearing where his father had magically sealed the entrance to the cave only a few days before. He looked down at his faintly glowing form to confirm that he was traveling in his astral body.
If I’m not asleep in bed and dreaming everything
, he thought.

He let that thought fade away as he noticed something that had escaped his attention. The cave was no longer sealed. Alex focused his willpower on moving closer to the entrance of the cave and he slid through the night until he hovered only ten feet from the hole in the ground. The work his father had done to close the entrance to the cave and camouflage its presence was entirely undone. More than undone. The entrance to the cave was now several times the size it had been when he had fallen into it.

Alex hesitated. Did he need to know more? Did he need to see inside the cave? He had not yet felt the presence of the Shadow Wraith, but that did not mean it was not free. No. It couldn’t be free. If it were, the town and the valley would already be in ruins. But partially free. It was certainly already partially free. And if it sensed his presence so close to its lair, what would it do? And more importantly, could Alex manage to escape? He was certain that he had only managed to escape the last time he was astral traveling because of Batami’s assistance.

Alex suddenly felt a fear creeping over him that was entirely different from the fear he was used to. Normally, a sense of fear accompanied a bodily sensation, but in his astral form, with his body back in bed watched over by his sister, he found the fear coalesced and collected in his mind. And the fear held his mind like a fist grasping a sword. He knew in a way he could not explain, on some existential level, that if the Shadow Wraith were to emerge from the cave at this moment, it would claim his soul-essence and his body back in his home would simply stop breathing as his own will and spirit were subsumed and destroyed by that creature of darkness.

A noise in the forest behind him snapped the fear in his mind like a twig, leaving his wits focused once again. Whatever was coming through the forest was not the Shadow Wraith. If there was one thing Alex was certain of, it was that the Shadow Wraith did not announce its arrival in such a manner.

Alex willed himself to move toward the edge of the clearing and arrived just as the movement in the darkened trees became a motion that emerged as a walking shadow. A shadow that faded into a face as it entered the pale moonlight of the clearing. It was a face that Alex knew well.

“Anna,” Alex said to himself soundlessly.

The second in command of the Mad Mages was walking with a purpose from the woods directly toward the entrance of the cave. Alex floated along beside her.

“Anna,”
Alex thought at her, trying to gain the girl’s attention.
“You have to stop. You can’t go there. It’s dangerous. Very dangerous.”

But Anna could not hear his thoughts and took no notice of his attempts to slow her down. She was mumbling something as she walked. And something of that mumble caught Alex’s attention.

“Dirty, filthy, I’ll show her, filthy, wretched horse,” Anna muttered as she walked toward the entrance of the cave.

Victoria, Alex thought to himself. Anna was talking about Victoria. Anna reached the edge of the cave entrance and stepped down into it. From his closer vantage point, Alex could now see that whoever had opened the cave had also created stairs of rock descending into its darkened interior. Alex didn’t wait for Anna to disappear into the cave. He was already focusing his mind on a place that he desperately wanted to be.

A moment later, he hovered above the street outside Victoria’s house. He was certain that Anna’s having mentioned Victoria while walking into the Shadow Wraith’s lair was no coincidence. Alex spun around and scanned the streets as he willed himself to rise up. He floated over to the window at the edge of the house and slid inside. Victoria had mentioned during their visit the night before that her room was at the side of the house. Now, Alex was floating in it.

The first thing he noticed was Victoria, sleeping in a large mass of cushions and pillows piled in one corner of the room. His mind relaxed as he saw her. She was safe. As he watched her sleeping, her deep breaths filling both her human and horse lungs, he felt himself smiling. She was just as beautiful while she slept as when she was awake. She gave a small snort and shifted in her sleep. Alex suddenly found himself hovering above the lawn. Even though he knew she couldn’t see him if she woke, the thought of her finding him staring at her sent him right out of the room.

Now outside the house, he sensed something that he had not felt before. Something sickeningly familiar. Soaring above the house, he scanned the grounds, feeling more than seeing what he knew was there. A formless shifting shadow moving through the trees in the backyard. Without even considering the danger to himself, Alex willed himself to the edge of Victoria’s backyard where the grass gave way to the trees. The shadow flowed through the foliage and then stopped. He knew in the core of his being that, while this thing in the trees was not the Shadow Wraith itself, it was part of the dark creature. An independent aspect that was as dangerous to Alex as Shan’Kal itself. A surrogate shadow soldier. Alex also knew why the creature was here at Victoria’s home. He knew he had to lead it away.

“Been looking for me?”
Alex thought in his mind. He knew instinctively that the creature could hear him. It straddled the spirit and living realms to function in both.

The shadows stopped moving. An odd silence came in that moment. Time froze like an insect trapped in a piece of ice. And then the ice melted and the water evaporated and time returned as the shadow creature flowed out of the woods and toward Alex.

Alex willed himself to move across the lawn and over the fence and out into the street. He also willed himself not to think himself awake and back in bed. Not yet. Not until he had lured the minion of the Shadow Wraith away from Victoria.

Alex swept along the street and over the trees, between the houses and back into the trees. He did not need to glance behind himself to know that the flowing shadows were following him. He could feel them like hands scrabbling at his back, making him remember a sensation of hands clasping at him from earlier that night. He veered to the left and headed back to where he had been just a few hours before. Alex slid between the iron bars of the fence around the cemetery as though they did not exist. For him, they didn’t. They also offered no obstacle to the roiling cloud of blackness that pursued him.

“Shun-Tu-Tan-Hoal,”
Alex thought clearly as he flew over the neatly lined tombstones and dove toward the rundown section of misshapen graves in the back corner.
“Shun-Tu-Tan-Hoal,”
Alex shouted in his mind as he came to hover above the broken headstones of those dark spirits who had given him a similar pursuit to the one he endured now. He watched the black mass of shadow gathering before him and, in just the same moment, the spirits of the dead — vile and valiant alike — rose up from their resting places and attacked the shadow creature.

The ghosts swarmed the beast of darkness, its shadowy shades fluctuating and thinning as it struggled with the ephemeral phantoms that now tormented it. Alex did not wait to see what the outcome would be. He knew that the Shadow Wraith’s creature would not be destroyed. It would be withdrawn like a hand being pulled back from a flame. It would flee to strike again at a later time. But it would flee and that was all that Alex cared about. The question was whether it would go back to pursue its original quarry. Alex focused his mind on the place he needed to be.

He sat up panting in bed, nearly knocking his sister to the floor from where she perched on the edge of the mattress.

“What happened?” Nina squeaked.

“We’ve got to get to Victoria’s house,” Alex said as he quickly slipped from bed and pulled on his pants.

“Why?” Nina asked, her face contorted in worry. “What’s the matter with Victoria?”

“I’ll explain on the way,” Alex said as he pulled on his shoes.

Chapter 18: Diabolical Demon Debacle

Alex and Nina snuck out through his bedroom window, lowering down a knotted rope that he kept hidden in his closet for just such occasions. Moments later, they were racing down the sidewalk, running low and trying to stay out of sight. As they ran, Alex explained what had happened and what he had seen during his brief astral flight. Nina was so surprised she nearly tripped over her own feet. When they arrived at Victoria’s house, Alex led the way to the corner beneath the window of her bedroom.

“What now?” Nina asked softly.

“I don’t know,” Alex said, momentarily surprised to find that he didn’t have a plan. He didn’t sense the presence of the Shadow Wraith’s proxy creature, its shadow soldier, but that could mean two things. Either Victoria was safe or she was already gone. Looking around at the ground around his feet, Alex saw what he needed. Picking up a small pebble, he stood and tossed it at Victoria’s window. The pebble struck the window with a faint cracking noise and fell back toward the ground. Alex caught it one-handed.

“That’s your plan?” Nina said, sounding incredulous. “How romantic.”

“Shush,” Alex said and tossed the pebble again. It struck the window a second time and fell back into Alex’s open hand. He waited a moment, worry beginning to rise in his chest, before tossing the pebble a third time. Unfortunately, he did not wait long enough, because just as the pebble reached the apex of its trajectory, Victoria’s window sash opened and she stuck her head out into the night air, right into the path of the pebble’s flight.

“Ouch!” Victoria hissed as she rubbed her forehead and stared downward with accusing eyes.

“Sorry!” Alex said, much louder than he might have wanted.

“Alex?” Victoria said, her eyes going wide in surprise. “And Nina? What are you doing here?”

“Checking to make sure you were safe,” Alex said, looking around to make sure no one was nearby to hear them.

“Safe from what?” Victoria asked. “No, wait. I’ll be right down. Meet me at the back door.”

“Wait!” Alex said in a hushed voice. He was afraid that the sound of hooves on the hardwood floors of the house would wake her father, if not the neighbors. But it was too late. Victoria had withdrawn back into her room. Alex gave his sister an exasperated look and then led the way around the house to the back door. Victoria already awaited them on the back porch.

“How did you get here so fast?” Nina said in amazement as she and Alex climbed the steps of the porch.

“Magical closets,” Victoria said. “The house is riddled with them. Daddy loves to do that sort of thing. Of course, you never know quite which closet you’ll come out of when you go into one, but I got lucky. Now what brings you out here in the middle of the night? Is something wrong?”