A Shiver of Shadows

by Hunter J. Skye

  A heavy warmth spread through me as he shared the mouthwatering weight of my breasts in his palms. I became his aching need as he burdened me with the hardened stretch of his loins. I could barely understand the gorged greed that begged him to bend me over the banister and push inside me. His yearning tore at me. It was ravenous.

  I gripped the sideways steel of his column through the fabric of his pants and pushed my thoughts toward him. My liquid longing slid along his flesh. He fell against me as his senses were overcome by my fathomless feminine craving. Our psychic bond was quickly becoming an addiction for both of us. It was one thing to feel your own pleasure and guess at your lover’s. It was quite another to experience both at the same time.

  I rubbed his length and shared my submission, my need to be taken. I wrapped him in the famine I felt when he was gone. A cry escaped my lips as he lifted my skirt and searched my wettest secrets with his fingertips. I wanted to let him into every hiding place, every insatiable part of my womanhood, but the world had forced me to lock those urges away and fasten them with a key of shame. He pounded against that rigid place inside me until the bolt of my restraint began to slide. Something was slipping free inside me as his hands found my bottom and he lifted me up onto the trapped swell of his desire.

  Candlelight assaulted my eyes as the click of heels passed back into the living room below. Our thoughts recoiled to our separate minds as we were abruptly reminded of our surroundings. He released my legs and held me by the waist as I steadied myself on my feet again. I tugged my skirt back into place, reached up, and locked my arms around his neck. We searched for air as quietly as we could while pressed against each other. As much as I wanted him at that moment, I hadn’t signed the deed yet. It wasn’t officially my home for a few more days. And, when the time came, we would have enough of an audience with all the ghosts currently in residence. We didn’t need the living watching us christen the place as well.

  “We lost you for a minute,” the agent called up the stairs. I smiled and leaned over the warped railing. Grayford would need a moment to be presentable again.

  “Sorry. Just checking the…bones of the house,” I offered. Her eyes lit with knowledge and maybe admiration. Grayford was handsome in any century, and his accent and old-fashioned style just added to his charm.

  “Well, we’re finished,” she informed and pressed the antique marble-inlaid light switch. The toggle flipped to the on position, flooding the downstairs space with artificial light. Note to self: replace the ceiling light with something softer.

  The gray-haired psychic with the soft voice and silver-bangled wrists raised her hands in ceremonial triumph. Her bracelets chimed together as she proclaimed, “Your house is cleansed.” Her infectious smile spread to my real estate agent and had almost made it to me when a floorboard creaked in the center of the downstairs room.

  We all turned in unison as the creak was followed by a pop. I sped down the narrow staircase and scanned the empty room. There was nothing left but a few cleaning products in the corner and a worn throw rug spread across the petrifying wooden floor planks. Something snapped, and the agent jumped so violently she stumbled out of one of her impossibly high heels. She stood there staring at the empty living room, not even attempting to reach for her shoe.

  “Melisande, get behind me,” the Colonel ordered, racing down the stairs and stepping in front of me. I did what I usually do when the three hundred years between us gets in the way. I ignored him.

  “Thank you for your help.” I turned nervously to the two women. “Could we maybe take a last look at the yard? A friend suggested I take up gardening. I think I’d like to put in some flower beds.” I nodded briskly toward the front door. With the fog rolling off the river into the bay, the scene outside was less than welcoming, but at the moment anything was better than here.

  I slipped past the paralyzed women and opened the front door. It wasn’t the original door. I’d helped to rip that one to pieces six weeks ago, but the replica was nice enough.

  “Oh, it’s foggy out. Maybe we should walk to our cars together,” I offered in a “forced cheerful” tone. I caught Grayford’s glance. His handsome face had transformed into a mask of concern. To make matters worse, every shred of spirit, every echo of residual manifestation still haunting the house, suddenly vanished. The mass exodus left my head ringing with silence.

  The incredibly powerful, evolved poltergeist that had once inhabited this home stirred to life from its bejeweled seat on my wrist. I wasn’t a gaudy jewelry kind of girl, but the single hematite gem secured to my wrist by a polished silver band was simple, tasteful, and surprisingly good at containing malevolent forces.

  After we’d had words and I’d finally learned how to give it what it wanted, the poltergeist and I had come to an agreement. It stayed with me in its semi-precious home where I could keep an eye on it and, in return, it could feed on my fear. It was an uneasy partnership that allowed me to use its psychic force as a shield when needed. Narcolepsy is also a nightmare disorder making me a veritable wellspring of fear, so I got no complaints.

  Tendrils of mist crept across the water outside, spilling over the bulkhead and into the front yard. “Shall we?” I gestured to the unwelcoming darkness of the late summer night. The real estate agent’s “fight or flight” instinct finally kicked in. She grabbed her shoe and bolted for the door. Her movement snapped the medium out of her state of shock, and she spun, putting her back to the creaking room. I shoved her through the threshold, stepped back, and slammed the door shut, twisting the lock.

  Something coalesced at the center of the room. It started as a sliver, wan and wriggling. Then, it expanded, warping into a fleshy ribbon of human form. Air pulled from my lungs as its narrow chest fought for breath. Arms unfolded, followed by legs and, with a desperate gulp, a neck and head materialized just above its bony shoulders.

  Suddenly, the silence of the living room trembled with an awkward new sound. Not a drum. Not quite a rattle. Something with a tripping cadence. It was a dull thudding that stuttered, faltered, then started anew. It was another heartbeat, and it belonged to the naked man standing on the rug in the middle of the room.

  “Melisande Blythe?” The pale man’s voice rasped over the sickening sound of his struggling heart. His bare chest shuddered with each violent beat as though his ribs no longer offered containment.

  “Yes,” I whispered, stupefied. The feeble note in my voice added to the weakness spreading through my muscles. I may have gained a bit of control over my body’s cataplectic response to certain intense emotions. But I was still narcoleptic. That wasn’t going to change. Ever. My brain still lacked the neuroreceptor, orexin, in enough quantities to keep REM sleep from intruding on my waking life. Even with the progress I’d made, I still had one strong vulnerability, the startle response. The white-skinned, completely nude corpse of a man, whose gaze had settled on me like liquid lead, had definitely startled me.

  “Your presence is requested by Mahmoud, son of Hotan, Ruler of the Darvaza. I am to escort you to the Karakum, Land of the Dark Sand, Kingdom of the Fourth Door for his coronation. You are to be his honored guest and witness.”

  I blinked at the sunken, tendon-thin person addressing me. His shoulders seemed to droop with exhaustion, but his gaze was fever bright. I wasn’t sure which was harder to decipher, his rolling accent or the threat lacing his words.

  Grayford repositioned himself between me and the wraith-like intruder. This time I let him.

  “Sir! You are trespassing. You may speak your business outside with me.” Grayford gestured toward the kitchen and the back door, then his hands clenched into fists. For a second, I was tempted to let Grayford handle it. If nothing else, out of pure shock, but the naked man had used my name, and it sounded like he was issuing an invitation. I tried to focus on the jumble of words that had ground through his thready throat and burbled out from his powder-white lips. I stood for half a second longer, staring at Grayford’s back, and then I took
a wobbling step to the side. I peered past the Colonel until I could see the strange man again. His gaze had not shifted.

  “Uh…who are you?” I managed to ask, though my jaw had already begun to loosen, and my tongue dragged across my words. Grayford must have heard the lisp. He turned panicked eyes to me, and his fists unclenched to catch me. I lurched to the side, falling against the front door. Outside, I heard both the real estate agent and the medium shriek.

  “No.” I waved Grayford off. He knew not to touch me. I was slipping into the hypnagogic state. Any contact with my skin would set off a hallucination, and things were bad enough at the moment.

  “I am Rasmus.”

  I blinked again, looking for a little more information.

  “I am a messenger,” he added impatiently.

  I tried to form another question that might lead us to how or why this person was standing before us. Or how he knew my name. Or who Mahmoud was.

  “Sir!” Grayford snapped and took a step toward the man.

  “I…I cannot. I cannot do this,” Rasmus whispered, lowering his gaze. “Mahmoud must wait. The fourth gate is stable for the moment.” The emaciated man caught me again with his searing glance. I did not want to meet his eyes, but I sure didn’t want to look lower. His manhood hung in a long, flaccid line at the bottom of my vision. “The second gate is losing cohesion. If the Second Devil falls, all of Europe will be lost.” I watched the anxious, almost pleading, look melt from his withered face. Something stronger took its place. Resignation tightened his narrow features, and his countenance hardened with resolve.

  The hot, acidic wash of anxiety in my brain pulled his words apart like taffy. Had he just referred to a “stable” gate? And what was that about a Second Devil falling? We wanted devils to fall. Right? I’d worked hard to ensure the Seventh Devil had fallen. Devils—bad. Closed hell gates—good.

  “No!” Grayford shouted, and an echo of power rang forth from him, filling the room. I winced as it reverberated in a thunderous wave, knocking Grayford off his feet.

  Rasmus lifted his hand, and I felt every cell in my body yank forward. I swung my arm up and sent my will toward the bracelet.

  “Shield!” My order ripped down the icy leash that bound the poltergeist to me. It lashed out with maddened thoughts as it turned its venomous mind to me. It dripped with desecration. It muttered mutilation. I cast my will around it, and its mass expanded, ripping free of its stony cage. I lost my balance and fell. My head cracked against the floor. Lights flickered behind my eyes.

  “Melisande,” the real estate agent called through the door, jiggling the handle. Thank goodness she’d left the lockbox on the kitchen counter.

  An invisible hand fastened on my legs. My stomach tickled as I lifted through the air. I kicked out, but there was nothing to create resistance. The poltergeist spread out around me, forming an invisible boundary. It ached to attack the intruder, but I held it in place as it shaped around my body. Rasmus brought his other hand up and his fingers flashed. A crystalline note sliced through my mind, and the poltergeist shattered.

  Suddenly, the sickeningly erratic beat of Rasmus’s heart thundered in my ears. It pounded against my own chest. I was caught in the grip of the pale man, pressed against his naked body like a lover. My vision swam as I searched the room. Grayford lay crumpled next to the front door as the women pounded on it from the outside. I pushed my thoughts out, desperately searching every crevice of the house, but there was not a trace of the poltergeist. The contaminated pressure of its presence was just…gone.

  “Grayford,” I tried to whisper, but cataplexy stole through me like a thief. It would never care what peril I was in. It didn’t concern itself with my preservation. It existed to do one thing and one thing only—shut me down. My mouth fell open as my jaw unhinged. I watched through lowering lashes as the world wept, then wavered, then washed away.

  Chapter Two

  Unknowable Forces

  Grayford

  I was almost thankful for the ringing in my ears. It dampened the horror of the moment. I did my best to calm the real estate agent and her wide-eyed associate. Their panicked queries tumbled, and suddenly, I was on the open ocean again, completely at the mercy of unknowable forces. It had been so long since I’d felt that teetering uncertainty. I was dizzy for the first time in over two centuries.

  I offered what vague explanations I could patch together in an attempt to explain what had just transpired. My hastily issued excuses for Melisande’s departure fell on deaf ears. I watched from the front step as the two women rushed to their cars with cell phones clenched tightly in hands. My newly installed heart shook me with its pounding. What had happened? For a moment, I was lost in the honeysuckle heaven of Melisande’s embrace and then all had gone to rot and ruin. That man. That infidel.

  Melisande?

  I grasped for the tether that bound us together, but it lay severed. Silence filled my mind. I reached out with my thoughts in all directions, but the veil of the world, once so insubstantial, was now an immovable mass to me. It was a vexing thickness filled with all the riches of the senses and all its limitations.

  It was a prison.

  ****

  I stared at the spot where Melisande and the pale man had stood less than one hour ago. Each moment that passed in this infuriatingly resistant world took me farther from her. Summoning assistance had been the only way to think this through. I’d needed help to order my scattered thoughts. Remembering the look in Melisande’s amber eyes formed a sliver of ice in my heart. I’d finally prevailed upon her to trust me, and the moment I was tested, I’d failed. The feathery brush of her thoughts had vanished. She was gone.

  “Take heart, Colonel. If the villain intended to kill her, I cannot believe he would have gone to such effort to abduct her.” Mr. Pratt’s calm assessment held merit. I was glad I’d called on him. I looked to the spot where my loyal friend stood. His ghostly visage had changed after the battle at the closing of the Seventh Gate. The Scotsman’s previously corporeal body had been ripped asunder and the two gruesome pieces had been flung to opposite edges of the battlefield. We all had thought him lost, but Mr. Pratt was made of stouter stuff. He’d recovered his ethereal form, after a fashion, but his two parts were still poorly aligned. His top half turned to me and the lower parts lagged behind.

  “She is beyond the range of my senses.” He paced the darkened room, dragging his lower portion a few inches behind.

  “Have you encountered such a fiend in your travels?” I asked Mr. Pratt, not for the first time. The desperation in my voice was heavy with self-reproach. Had I still the strength of the netherworld, I would have peeled away the soupy night that spilled through the open doorway of the battered cottage. I would have searched the frozen void between space and time until I found the bright beacon of her soul. No, I condemned myself again. Even if I could sense her, I could only separate my atoms for a brief moment. Time enough to cover a kilometer, maybe less. If Mr. Pratt could not sense her, then there was untold distance between us.

  “As you know, there are those spirits of the elements that reside far from man,” Mr. Pratt began. “It is my understanding they possess the ability to translocate.” He turned again, and his lower half followed. “Yet, the wraith you describe does not fit the type.”

  “This one…” I hesitated as I recalled the stranger’s unnatural twist of sinew and bone, the desperate beat of his stampeding heart. “He was no elemental. Withered as he was, he was of flesh and blood. He called himself Rasmus.” I watched as my friend and trusted advisor considered the evidence.

  “Did you smell sulfur?” Pratt questioned carefully.

  “No. You suspect a creature of hellfire?”

  “No. At least, now that the Hell Gate has been closed, I do not. But if there are truly other hell mouths as you say...” Pratt’s gaze shifted to a faraway place.

  “Yes, a fourth gate he referred to as the Darvaza.”

  “A burning crater in Turkmenista
n. I am familiar with it. I sincerely hope she is not there. The Karakum Desert is the kingdom of the Djinn, and it is drenched in blood.”

  Pratt’s words chilled the very marrow in my bones.

  “Rasmus seemed fixed on a second gate in a separate location.” I tried desperately to push the panic of the moment from my mind and remember the abductor’s exact words.

  “He said if the Second Devil falls, all of Europe will be lost.”

  “Europe is a big place.”

  “Indeed.”

  Just then, a splintered floorboard lifted into the air and launched at my head. I dodged, and the deadly projectile sliced through the center of poor Mr. Pratt. It did no harm to his incorporeal remains. Nonetheless, it was unforgivably rude.

  “What are you waiting for, you worthless…? Go, find her!” Power rode my words. It crackled in my mouth. My stomach seized, and I doubled over. It was the same sensation that had overtaken me just before Melisande vanished.

  “Colonel!” Mr. Pratt’s upper half hovered over me. I waved a hand to ward him off. The burning pressure inside my chest expanded. I had no idea how to expel it. Before the reclamation of my human form, I’d have shaped this energy into a useful form. Now, it seemed lodged within me. I had two options: let it fester inside until it pulled me apart, or unleash it on the world as a dangerous misshapen thing. I’d already tried the second and suffered the consequences.

  “There is a great quantity of psychic force building inside you.” Pratt’s panicked voice fought for my attention. “You must purge it, or I fear your earthly flesh will not survive.”

  “I…I cannot dislodge it.” My lungs fought for space to breathe. “It burns!”