The Reverence of One: Book Three of the Shadow Series (10 page)

Hidden from the sight of the living, Cliff watched as Lauren lifted her right arm to knock on the door. With a dull thud, her knocking echoed loudly through the hallway of the apartment complex. As she raised her hand to knock once more, the door cracked open, the security chain allowing it to only open a few inches.

“I don’t need anything,” said Thad as he peered through the opening. His words were slurred.

With her hood
and hair
obscuring her face, Lauren replied. “
We need you.”

Thad positioned his head so as to attempt to see whoever else might be standing in the hall. Seeing no one, he asked slovenly, “Who’s we?”

Her voice devoid of any emotion, Lauren replied coldly and in a matter of fact tone. “Me,” she paused, allowing the energy within to begin to pulse. “Me and your grandfather.”

Thad watched as the empty space to the left of the woman began to fill with a small form. It began as a dark shadow, like he’d seen earlier that morning in his apartment, only this time the shadow continued to develop until he could see the whites of a man’s eyes.

Terrified, he slammed the door. Lauren and Cliff could hear him shouting on the other side.

“Holy shit! Holy shit! This isn’t happening!”

Lauren turned to Cliff, who was now standing in full solid form next to her. “What do you want to do now?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” replied the old man. “
I hadn’t counted on him being drunk.
I don’t know what good it’d be to talk to him right now.”

Frustrated, Lauren leaned on
the door while everything on the other side had grown conspicuously silent. “Well damn, Cliff, I don’t think we have time to go and get a cup of coffee!”

“Take it easy, Lauren
,
I figure we can handle this ourselves.”

“What do you mean
?
Y
ou and I go to get the girl?”

“Yeah, why not?” replied Cliff.

Lauren removed the hood from her head and pulled
the
hair back from her face.
In an effort to settle her reaction, she took a deep breath and replied.
“That won’t work.”

Cliff could tell that she was trying to stay calm, but he didn’t
quite
understand
her reluctance
. “Why not? I figure we just go over there and get her.”

With the back of her head leaning against the door, she could hear Thad turn the deadbolt lock on the other side. She pushed herself away from the door, and with a grin, replied. “I’m weak, Cliff. If you remember, though I’m not human, I’m not a spirit either. To spend so much time on your side takes a lot of energy.” With each word spoken, her intensity grew and grew until she had finally beg
un to shout. “That, and now you’re
sucking up more of it just by standing here! This is all a trap, remember? It may not be a trap for me, but I’ll sure as hell die just the same if I’m caught!”

Cliff’s nostrils
flared;
angered by the thought that surely Lauren knew what she was getting into when they departed. “Well why the hell did you come then?
”
he asked brashly. “Besides that, Nicole is supposed to be the
bait;
they don’t know that we know what they’re planning. We get her first!
”

The door behind her began to vibrate on its hinges as increasingly strong waves of energy began to emanate from within her core.
Realizing that, not only was she allowing what was left of her energy to pour out of her, the thought that she was basically emitting a homing signal struck her harshly.
Instantly terrified, Lauren closed her eyes and focused, using the memory of Maggie’
s words as a source of comfort. Within seconds, the vibrations had stopped and she opened her eyes to the old man.

“Okay, look, here’s a plan,” she began in a voice demonstrating more control. “We have to get inside and talk to your grandson; it’s the only way. He’s going to have to be the one to get Nicole. My presence there could be like a beacon to the Reapers,” she paused and glanced back to the door, “hell, for all I know I just messed up enough that Iku could be here any second.”

Cliff’s face, stoic and intense,
twitched slightly as he
nodded his head. “Okay then, we’ve got our plan.” He walked past Lauren and leaned his body against the door. Letting go of his hold on
her
energy, he faded into obscurity and passed through the door. Once on the other side, he rematerialized and watched as Thad’s
eyes rolled into the back of his head. The shock of seeing his dead grandfather standing beside him proved more than his drunken mind could bear, and Cliff watched as Thad’s body
fell limp to the floor, falling backwards into the living area.

Lauren stood outside the door, impatiently waiting for it to open, when she heard the thud of Thad’s body on the ground. Suddenly feeling as though she were being watched, she glanced to her right to see a young girl, about eight to nine years old, standing at the end of the hallway.

“Oh shit,”
she thought to herself.
“How long has she been standing there?”

Quickly flashing a forced smile to the child, she flipped her hand in the air and gave a quick wave. “Hi.”

The little girl waved back, her innocent young face not showing a hint of fear. With her eyes still locked on the little girl, Lauren knocked on the door.

“Uh, Cliff, can I come in now?”

Instantly she could hear the deadbolt turn and the security chain slide off. Before Cliff had the chance, she turned the knob herself. Looking back at the girl, she once more grinned and waved goodbye.

“Bye,” replied the little girl.

In seemingly one motion, Lauren entered the apartment and closed the door behind her. Noticing Thad’s body on the floor, she rolled her eyes.

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” she said in a matter of fact tone.

“He passed out when he saw me—too much for him,” answered Cliff.

Lauren giggled. “Well if he thought that was too much, he’s in trouble when he meets me, huh?”

Though he knew Lauren was doing her best to make light of the situation, an overwhelming feeling of guilt had taken over the old man. Cliff returned to Thad’s side as Lauren walked by him and into the apartment. As the old man shook Thad carefully in an attempt to wake him up, he could hear Lauren opening cupboard doors in the kitchen. In less than a minute, she had returned with a wet paper towel in hand, the staunch smell of ammonia heavy around her.

“Here,” she said, handing Cliff the paper towel. “Let him sniff this. It should bring him out of it.”

Cliff huffed. “I’ll be damned, poor man’s smellin’ salts.”

As the old man lowered the towel, a drip of ammonia fell to Thad’s top lip, causing an immediate reaction to both the sensation and the smell.

“Thad,” called Cliff, lightly slapping
his grandson’s
face. “Come on, boy, wake up.”

The spirit and the Shadow watched as Thad’s eyelids began to flutter, his pupils dancing up and down
be
neath them.
Suddenly he erupted from the floor, confused and moaning while rubbing his face.

“What the…
,
” he stammered. “What the hell happened
?
”
Thad glanced up, his eyes first meeting Lauren’s
and
then
his grandfather
’s
. He stared at Cliff in disbelief, and slowly made his way to the chair that sat at an angle to the couch, never taking his eyes off the old man. “This can’t be happening. You can’t be real.” Though his words were still slightly slurred, the shock of the moment had quickly sobered him.

Cliff replied softly, unsure of how to appropriately respond. “It’s real, son, and I’m sorry to have met you this way.” He took a careful step towards Thad, but stopped when he recoiled away. Holding his hands up, Cliff tried to comfort him. “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay.” He watched as Thad glanced to Lauren’s hands and realized a secondary source of terror for his grandson. The old man turned to her and could plainly see that her hands, though faint, were still emanating a faint blue light on their backsides. He turned back to Thad. “This is Lauren. She’s a friend of mine. She’s the reason why you can see me, the reason I can be with you right now.”

Thad’s mouth opened, emitting a guttural sound for a second, and then closed. Lauren reached out her right hand to him, revealing the bright red glow from her palm
.

“I know this is difficult,” she said to Thad, “but we don’t have a lot of time. We need your help.”

Thad furrowed his brow. “Who—what are you?”
he asked, his voice trembling in fear.

“She’s right, we don’t have much time,” said Cliff as he walked to Thad. Standing in front of him, he continued. “You remember that girl in the coffee shop?”

Thad struggled to collect himself enough to remember anything.

Coaxing him forward, Cliff spoke. “You remember, the girl in your vision.”

The look of fear on Thad’s face melted away. His eyebrows raised and a sudden light of clarity gleamed in his eye.

“Yes, I remember. But how—how did you know about her?” asked Thad.

Cliff grinned playfully and replied with a wink. “Because I was there.”

His face twisting awkwardly, he walked himself back through that morning in his mind. Before he could respond, Cliff spoke again.

“I know you have the gift.”

Thad’s eyes quickly met his grandfather’s. “You do?” he asked.

Cliff nodded with another wink.

Suddenly, th
e fear within him began to melt
and Thad was overcome with a
strange feeling of
comfort. Finally, someone who could understand him, someone that could help him make sense of the visions he’d been having repeatedly.

“What does it mean?” asked Thad.

“It’s a very special gift that seems to skip a generation in our family,” replied Cliff. “My grand-daddy had it, I had it, and now you’ve got it.”

Shaking his head from side to side, Thad clarified himself. “No, what I mean is, why am I having basically the same vision over and over?”

Cliff scratched at his chin and thought for a moment. “How do you know Nicole?” he asked.

Thad leaned back in the chair, his posture much more relaxed than moments before. “I don’t,” he replied. “I went into the coffee shop that morning and there she was.”

“Do you go there often?” asked Cliff.

“Yeah, just about every morning.”

Cliff took a seat on the edge of the coffee table, and facing Thad replied. “I suppose you’ve seen her more often than you realize. The sight is funny like that. You might not remember her or know her, but somehow your subconscious does.”

Thad leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands in front of him. “So what does it mean?”

Cliff glanced to Lauren as he began to speak. “That girl’s in trouble, not because of anything that she did, but because of someone she used to know.” The old man looked back to Thad. “What do you know about me, other than we share a gift?”

Thad’s gaze took on a sudden look of uneasiness. “Not much. Dad never shared much with me
.
”
H
e paused
, not sure of how his next sentence would be received.
“I’ve learned more about you in the last year than ever before, but it wasn’t from him.”

The words cut into Cliff, but he understood. “I doubt he could, son. You see, I never gave him the chance
to know me.” His eyes began to
well with tears. Cutting off the flow of emotion, Cliff cleared his throat and continued. “What you’ve learned about me in the last year, that have anything to do with what happened in
Lincoln
?”

Thad nodded his head slowly and replied plainly. “Yes.”

The old man huffed and turned back to Lauren who stood next to the couch behind him. “Life sure is funny, ain’t it?” he asked.

Lauren, standing with her arms folded across her chest, didn’t respond. Her patience was being tried. She knew that this was important to Cliff, to touch base with his grandson and to try to explain everything about the situation, but time was short.

“Do my visions have something to do with that?” asked Thad.

Cliff stood and turned back to his grandson. “In a roundabout way, yes.” The old man turned and walked to a book shelf that held more of Thad’s family pictures. As he spoke with his back to the room, he took an old picture of Thad and Elijah into his hands. “That boy, Test, that I helped in
Lincoln
, he ain’t the villain that everyone’s made him out to be. The reality of things is that he’s just a young man who was given a gift, too, just like you. As a matter of fact, he’s in much the same spot you probably were years ago.” He turned back to face Thad. “Just like you didn’t have anyone to help you understand the whys and hows of the gift you’d received, Test was just as much in the dark. Just like you are having visions of Nicole, I had visions of Test.”