The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  “I’ve got him,” someone shouted.

  Charles thought he recognized the voice. Couldn’t place it in his agony. He felt around his torso until he found the wound in his side. Probably shattered his ribs. Bits of bone probably stuck in his internal organs like splinters. Not a scrape or a clip. Not a wound he could survive, maybe not even with immediate medical attention.

  And the solider looking over him now wasn’t about to call Charles an ambulance.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  With Kate slung over his shoulder, Lockman took a careful step backward from the werewolf. Jessie visibly trembled, her gaze locked on the thing that had played her step-father for the past several years.

  “Easy, Jess. Step back with me.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “He’s an animal. You can’t think of him in any other way. In this form, he’s operating more on instinct than anything. If we don’t come off as an immediate threat, he might go away.”

  He no sooner said it when the wolf bounded for him.

  Lockman had barely a second to react. He spun sideways as if in a ballet with an unconscious partner. As smoothly as he could, he set Kate on the floor.

  The wolf leapt through the space Lockman had just vacated, but he recovered quickly and crouched for a second pounce.

  Lockman ducked low and waited for the wolf to make a move. His heart thundered in his chest. The odds of him taking on a werewolf in hand-to-hand combat did not stack high. He would have taken a nest of vamps over this one wolf any time. Unfortunately, you can pick your friends, but your supernatural enemies usually pick you.

  The wolf growled from deep in its throat. While its glimmering red eyes looked all wolf, they had a human-like focus, an intelligence behind them. Lockman realized he was wrong about werewolves, or at least this one. Even in wolf form, the thing could think and reason like a mortal. The perfect melding of logic and instinct.

  Scary shit.

  The wolf jumped.

  Lockman threw out his hands and gripped fur before the wolf’s jaws could snap into his throat. The impact threw him back. He let the momentum carry him and rolled onto his shoulders while kicking out with his legs. One foot caught the wolf in the belly while Lockman rolled backward and the wolf yelped and fell away.

  On his feet, Lockman prepped himself for another attack. He spotted the wolf padding around Kate’s body. Strings of saliva hung from the wolf’s teeth. Its black hackles stood on end. It snapped at Kate’s ear without actually biting her.

  Jessie shrieked.

  “Get away from her, Benji. She’s had enough of your rabies.”

  The wolf’s jaw opened wide, showing yellow teeth and a pink tongue spotted with black. It gently rested its mouth against Kate’s throat, but didn’t clamp down.

  Lockman’s gut clenched. His face burned.

  “Do it.”

  The quality of Jessie’s voice sent a chill down Lockman’s spine. He turned to her, slack-jawed.

  Her hard gaze stayed on the wolf. “She’s going to wake up insane anyway. Might as well put her out of her misery.”

  The wolf hesitated. Lockman thought he could see some conflict behind the wolf’s eyes. It seemed ridiculous, but Alec was still in there. This was not just an animal. And Lockman would do well to remember that.

  “You pretended to love her a long time,” Jessie said. Even with fresh tears in her eyes, she looked cold-blooded. She looked like Lockman. “But you’re just an animal. So get it over with. Kill her.” She bent down. The knife Dolan meant to use for his sacrifice lay at her feet. She picked it up and stood straight. “Then I can kill you.”

  “Jessie,” Lockman said. He opened his mouth to say more and found himself empty of words. So he joined her in glaring at the wolf, the dare on the table, the choice with the monster.

  The wolf backed away from Kate’s body and closed its mouth.

  Lockman held out his hand to Jessie. “Knife, please.”

  The wolf pounced for Lockman again.

  Jessie tossed the knife and Lockman dove to meet it halfway. He reached out and grabbed it by the blade. The blade cut him, but he had no time to sweat the small stuff. When he landed from his dive he threw the knife at the charging wolf.

  The thin blade buried itself between the wolf’s eyes, nearly to the hilt. The wolf stopped short with a yelp, then dropped to the floor.

  Panting, Lockman stood and walked over to the wolf. He stepped on the top of the wolf’s skull and pried the knife free. Then he swung a leg over the wolf’s back as if mounting a horse. “You might want to look away,” he said to Jessie.

  She stared at him without a flinch.

  He grabbed the fur on the back of the wolf’s head and lifted it back to expose the neck. The blade had a sharp enough edge that Lockman cut easily through the wolf’s throat until he hit the spine at the base of the neck. That’s when he had to saw. Eventually he had the wolf’s head clean off. He threw it aside, stood.

  Jessie looked him up and down.

  Lockman felt the blood all down the front of his pants. He didn’t need to look. “Can’t take chances. Sorry you had to see that.”

  “I’m not.”

  He didn’t like that vacant tone to her voice. Didn’t like the matching blank stare. He approached her and took her by the shoulders. “You need to get a grip.”

  “I’m fine. I get it now. There’s no such thing as good mojo.”

  “It’s a hard lesson to learn.”

  “Whatever. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Lockman nodded and turned to retrieve Kate.

  Kate sat up, watching them both with wide eyes.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Dolan searched through his desk for something sharp. The soul artifact sat on the desk’s surface. It felt as if the artifact were staring at him, demanding to know why it hadn’t received the blood sacrifice it so craved.

  No one is more disappointed than me.

  Bottom drawer he found a rusty letter opener left behind by the plant manager. The edges were dull, but the point might work. The rust was a concern, though. Last thing he wanted was lockjaw.

  He smirked. Lockjaw for the sake of Lockman. Funny.

  He stuck the letter opener in his belt like a pirate’s dagger. Retrieved the soul artifact. Started for the office door.

  Tanner’s voice, with an altered edge, echoed nearby. “I know you wouldn’t be stupid enough to go to your office.”

  Dolan froze in the center of the room. He gripped the artifact so tightly the corners gouged at his palm.

  A second later, Tanner stepped through the office door. “Or maybe you are that stupid.”

  Dolan’s insides quivered. He held out a hand. “Now, Tanner. Let’s talk.”

  “You know I’m not Tanner, right?”

  “How? How can you be inside of him?”

  Not-Tanner shook his head. “You summon up things you have no idea how to control.”

  “Oh, I know how to send you back. My men are on it right now. They just called, in fact. They have your wife and they are going to kill her, which will send you right back where you belong.”

  Tanner raised his gun. “Call them off.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Call them off or you die with her.”

  Dolan felt himself shaking and couldn’t do anything to stop it. “All right. Easy. I’m calling them now.” He drew his cell phone with a trembling hand. God damned ghosts were worse than vampires. But if he could make it through this and still carry on as planned, unleashing hundreds of others like this one…the mind boggled at the damage that would create in a city like Detroit. He hadn’t known about the possession thing. Wasn’t sure how that would play. He would have to make sure he was a lot farther away from the city than he’d originally planned. Like, in another country.

  He speed-dialed Melinda’s phone. She usually had things under control the most. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

  The phone rang.
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  And rang.

  Rang.

  A generic voicemail message asked Dolan to leave a message. He looked at Tanner who hadn’t taken his gaze, or his gun, off of Dolan the whole time. “Melinda,” he said into the voicemail void. “I want you to call off the execution.” He paused, pretending to listen to a non-existent voice on the other end. “That’s right. Well done.” He hung up. “There. All done.”

  Tanner waved the gun. “Put the phone on the desk, then get on your knees.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because now that I have some time, I’m going to have some fun.”

  “I don’t understand. I brought you back from the dead. You should be thanking me.”

  Tanner’s eyes narrowed. “Thanking you?”

  It was eerie how the man’s face looked so unlike the one Dolan recognized as Tanner just from the way his expressions had changed. A different consciousness had a different way of showing emotion. The supernatural world truly was a frightening and amazing thing. Even after all these years of study, Dolan still had so much to learn.

  “You pull my spirit from beyond the veil by using my wife as…bait? A magnet?”

  “More like a magnet, yes.”

  “Then you threaten to keep me in control by threatening her life.”

  “A person is defined by what they will do for those they love. It’s a powerful weapon that transcends all plains of existence.”

  “You think you’re so…” His head jerked as if he’d heard someone call his name. “Millie?”

  Dolan smiled. A little late, but it looked like his team had finally put the ghost’s wife down. “I believe that’s the sound of death calling you back home.”

  Not-Tanner bared his teeth and opened fire on Dolan.

  Dolan scampered back as the bullets whizzed by him. He was caught in the open with no place to dive for cover. He braced himself for the feel of a bullet punching through his chest. One shot nipped the side of his thigh.

  Not-Tanner stopped shooting before hitting his target. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell to the floor. A greenish mist swirled above Tanner’s body making a sound as loud as a full-sized tornado. Dust and debris blew and fluttered through the office. Then the green cloud shot like a comet through the ceiling and out of sight.

  Dolan dropped to his knees, heart pulsing hard in his chest. Then he broke into a laughing jag that brought tears to his eyes. Once again, he had successfully wielded the powers from beyond the veil, had controlled the uncontrollable, and had shown his mortal dominance over the supernatural.

  He lifted the cubic artifact to eye-level. Imagine what he could yet do when he got his brother’s memories.

  Charles knew he was going to die. And he could accept that. What he couldn’t accept was that Millie would die, too. A woman that reminded him of his mother. A woman pulled into the real scary side of the world against her will all because a power-hungry idealist needed to use her to raise a ghost for his bidding.

  For the first time in his life, so close to death, Charles had a purpose. Not the false purpose of the Movement. He couldn’t believe he had bought into all that bull to begin with. It took an innocent woman that looked like his mom to show him how stupid he’d been. The bullet in his side had helped, too.

  Fear of death will do crazy things to a man.

  The soldier standing over him aimed his weapon at Charles’s face. “Why’d you go rogue on us, Chaz?”

  Charlie smiled. “You shouldn’t have asked me that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it bought me time.” Charles pulled the trigger on his gun, which he’d aimed up into the soldier’s crotch.

  The soldier jumped, his finger twitching on his own trigger.

  The burst of automatic fire chewed a hole in the lawn by Charles’s head, then the soldier dropped backward.

  Charles fired two more shots into the soldier’s chest and went to work on getting to his feet. The pain chewing through his side doubled. His vision narrowed. He blinked away the dizziness swooping over him and stood. He waddled toward the house. Police sirens cried in the distance. You couldn’t have a good firefight in the suburbs without someone calling the cops.

  Charles laughed at his own thoughts. Then laughed when he realized how delirious he must be. Somehow he made it to the front door and inside. He heard Millie crying and begging in the next room. The next room was the kitchen. Charles staggered in and found a third soldier holding a gun to Millie’s head while she knelt on the floor. This soldier, a woman, had her back to Charles, but he recognized her blonde buzz cut. Melinda. At one time, when he first joined the Movement, he had a crush on her.

  Now he aimed at her head. “Mindy.”

  She turned, had a second to show her surprise.

  Charles shot her in the face, then twice in the torso once she dropped to the floor.

  Millie was screaming, still kneeling on the floor and faced away. She had no idea what was going on.

  Charles fell to his knees beside her. He felt the life leaking out his side. “Just me,” he said. “You’re okay now.”

  She turned to him, noticed the wound in his side. “Oh, God.” She grabbed at his arm. “Oh, thank you.”

  “It’s all good.” He coughed up some blood. “Think I finally earned my badge for assisting an elderly person.”

  Her tear-streaked and raw face broke into a smile.

  Charles couldn’t think of anything better to see right before dying. He touched her cheek. “You remind me so much of my mom.”

  “It’s funny. You remind me of Marcus.”

  “Marcus?”

  “My husband.”

  He tried to smile, but his face felt numb. His body had started filling with a bitter cold. He grew sleepy. Wanted nothing more than to lie down, so he did. Despite the cold inside of him, his face felt feverish and the cool linoleum felt nice against his cheek.

  Millie knelt by his side and held his hand. “You saved my life.”

  “Your husband.” Charles gasped. God, but it was hard to speak. “He’s…around.”

  Her face creased in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s…” Something colder than the cold already inside of him sluiced through him like liquid air. “…here.”

  Millie looked into the eyes of the young man who had saved her and saw the impossible. She saw Marcus. Not like before, how he had reminded her of her late husband. No. She saw Marcus’s soul in the eyes of another man.

  “Windmill,” the young man said, but only Marcus had ever called her that.

  “Marky.” Her chin quivered and her throat felt thick. Every nerve ending buzzed. Especially in the fingertips she used to trace his lips. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me, Mill.”

  “How? What happened to Charles?”

  “I don’t think I have a lot of time to explain. I don’t know if I could.”

  Millie cried. A waterfall flowed through her. “Oh, Marky, I’ve missed you like the devil. I hope you’re in a better place.”

  “I don’t know. I…I’ve done some shameful things.”

  She shushed him. “Don’t waste this time. Even if I’m hallucinating.”

  “You aren’t hallucinating. It’s real. I’m real.”

  “I love you. Never stopped.”

  “I never stopped loving you, either. I…” Charles winced, but Millie recognized her husband in the expression. “I think I’m going back.”

  “Wait. I…there’s so much to say. God, Mark, every time something happens, I think to myself, I can’t wait to tell Mark that. I forget you’re gone. Even after all this time.”

  “I’m not gone. I’m around. Talk to me. I think I’ll be able to hear you.” Another wince.

  It occurred to Millie that Marcus was dying along with Charles. It made no sense, but it sounded right in any case.

  “Something I have to…” He coughed. Blood bubbled between his lips.

  “What can I do?”
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br />   “Nothing…just…” His eyes fluttered closed. His body fell still.

  Millie wept as the police rushed, shouting, into the house.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  “You have no idea the effects on the temperature when the world is spinning.”

  Jessie stared at her mom, trying to process the words she had just spoken, even though there was no making sense of it. Mom had gone crazy.

  “It’s all so blurry. The temperature.” She looked at Craig and spat. “Warlock. This is your doing.”

  Jessie felt Craig’s arm loop around her shoulders. She shook him off. She didn’t want comfort. She wanted some way to fix this. She moved closer to her mom.

  Mom sat with her legs splayed in front of her and her palms on the floor behind her to hold her up. She kept blinking as if she had something in her eyes. Her tongue would dart out between her lips and lick at the corners of her mouth. Her gaze did not rest on anything for longer than a second. “It’s so warm.”

  Jessie crouched in front of her. “Mom. It’s Jessie. Do you recognize me?”

  “Harlot. Bringer of the dark age. Princess of the fallen days, when mortals become slaves.”

  Jessie’s chest squeezed. “Mom, please.”

  Gunfire echoed through the building, making Jessie and her mother both jump. Jessie’s mom screamed. “They’ve found us. This is when they make us beg for our lives.”

  “Sounds like Tanner found Dolan,” Craig said.

  Jessie couldn’t hold back any longer. She cried. The sadness buried her anger. No matter how badly she wanted to let that rage burn off the fear and sorrow, she couldn’t bring it back. For a moment she felt like Craig. She had learned the hard lessons about the darker things in this world. She had faced off with them and survived. Now her cynicism would carry her the rest of the way.

  It wasn’t fair. She was a thirteen year-old girl who had essentially lost her mother. An orphan. No matter what Craig had promised, he could not replace Mom. He could not make Jessie forget all the harm she had caused by seeking him out. And she could never go home again.