Not knowing what else to do, I cast a protection spell around me, using my borrowed magic. It was a power I hadn’t had while under his thumb, and therefore, he wouldn’t be familiar with it.
“You belong to me, Abel. Have you forgotten that?”
Oh, I definitely hadn’t.
“I paid an exorbitant sum to purchase you.”
I knew he had—the bounty hunter who’d kidnapped me had bragged about it to his comrades.
“I will own you again.”
Over my dead body.
I cracked a smile at the cliché. It was perfect because he likely would kill me rather than allow me to wander free where just anyone could pick me up.
Like the Shadow Prophet.
I glowered. I’d gone from one master to another. How had I not thought of it in that way before? Slavery was my lot in life, apparently. I tried not to get distracted by the discouragement that flowed over me.
“You’re too late, Chottl,” I said. “I’m already owned by someone.”
Chottl raised himself up. “Who?”
“I don’t know his name. He calls himself the Shadow Prophet. If you want me in your possession again, you’ll have to take it up with him.”
I would pay good money to see a battle between Chottl and the Shadow Prophet. One of them had to eliminate the other. I couldn’t see a way that wouldn’t happen.
My plans withered, though, when Chottl said, “The Shadow Prophet? This is bad news indeed.”
I hadn’t realized the man was so famous. A lot of people, it seemed, knew of him.
“This changes a lot.”
Chottl turned, and an antennae touched the air next to him. With a brief swirl of colors, a tunnel appeared. Without saying anything, he entered the tunnel and disappeared. Soon, I was alone. Alone and bewildered.
Had Chottl given up? Or was he returning to regroup? Would he and the Shadow Prophet battle it out? I didn’t think so—Chottl wouldn’t go up against someone like him. Not with the reaction he’d just given. I knew the alien too well. He refused to fight his own battles if he thought there was any chance of losing.
But I knew better than to think he would give up on me so easily. He’d created my Silver Assassin persona, after all. And technically, he did own me. He’d purchased me, and when Nicole and Lizzie had rescued me, they hadn’t paid him.
The acid in my stomach grew, again burning the back of my mouth. There wasn’t anything I could do about the situation. I wasn’t about to return to Chottl’s world to fight him—I’d never go back there, ever, if I could help it. The only thing I could do was prepare myself. Set up protections around my apartment. And tuck this encounter away for the time being.
Remembering there’d been another trail of blue smoke, I returned to where my protections had been broken and followed it. That trail abruptly ended in the middle of a street. It had probably been another Elder Thing, and when Chottl left, he or she did too.
Walking slowly, I headed back to my car. Lizzie was safe for the time being, and I needed to rest and prepare for the coming confrontation with the Shadow Prophet.
32
While setting up the protections around my apartment—hating needing to have yet another physical drain on me—I received a text from Heather.
He’s ready. Meet me at your warehouse for the deets.
Deets. Ha.
I tucked my phone into my pocket and jumped when I looked up. Melissa stood there, a pouty expression on her face.
“I saw that. Someone made you smile. You never smile for me.”
“Aww, that’s not true, Melissa. I smile every time you die.”
“You would miss me so much if I died for reals, Abel.”
Her serious expression took me by surprise. I didn’t need to do any soul-searching, though, to know what she said wasn’t true. “No, I wouldn’t. Melissa, I know you don’t fully understand it—or maybe you do. Whatever. Either way, the Shadow Prophet is the worst thing to ever happen to me. Literally the worst. And I’ve had some pretty bad things occur in my life.”
Kidnapping, slavery, watching close friends get killed, me killing—I didn’t need to hash that all out with her. Continuing, I said, “You dying permanently would be a sign that the Shadow Prophet isn’t looming over me, trying to force me to murder the woman I love.”
I took a deep breath, letting myself feel the joy and happiness that would crash over me if—when—I was free from him. “So no, I wouldn’t miss you. I wouldn’t even think about you again. I’d live a long, happy life with Lizzie. I’d forget you completely.”
A coy smile crossed her face, and I rolled my eyes. Here we go.
She stepped up to me, pushing me against the fence I’d stopped next to. “If you won’t even remember me, why can’t we play around a bit? Why can’t we have some fun? You’ve never even let me undress you.”
She ran her hands over my chest before raising her arms and linking them behind my neck, pressing her body against mine. Before I could stop her, she bit my shoulder.
What the crap? “Ouch!” I grabbed her, throwing her away from me. “That hurt!” I pulled up my sleeve and inspected the spot. A row of teeth marks was just showing up. She hadn’t punctured the skin, thank goodness, but still. What had she done that for?
“Let me heal it, please?” The expression on her face alternated between desire and hope.
I shook my head. “Not on your life.”
Everything she did revolved around sex. I’d made the mistake of letting her try to heal me in the past. Regardless of the fact that she did have that ability, she’d tried to negotiate her price for doing it. I’d insisted we figure out the negotiations first—otherwise, I might have been trapped into paying her what she wanted.
“Is there a point to you being here?” I asked, folding my arms and glaring at her.
“Oh! Right. He says I should tell you, ‘Good job transporting for me, Abel.’ Then he promised me I could kiss you on the lips.”
“Not a chance. He doesn’t get to negotiate those sorts of rewards.”
“I figured you’d say that.”
I started walking away from her, heading to my apartment. She caught my hand as I passed and pulled me in for a hug.
“I know how much you hate me, Abel . . . but you should know, it only fuels my passion for you.”
“That’s your deal, not mine.” I extricated myself from her grip and quickly walked home.
With a sigh of relief, I let myself into my apartment. She hadn’t followed.
33
Heather was inside my warehouse, fighting. As soon as I walked through the door, the resulting cheer of “Hello, Abel” that went up clued her into my presence. I waved to everyone before turning my attention to her. I couldn’t wait to get through this phase of opening a new warehouse. Luckily, it didn’t usually last long.
“Did you find him?” I asked.
“Yes, I did. And like I said before, he’s a ghost. Which means he’s on the same level as the Shadow Prophet.”
I leaned against the bar near the front doors where I kept all the sign-in information. “And you’re sure he’s good?”
“Yes. Very good. Again, like I already mentioned, when he chooses to kill someone, they stay dead.”
I still wasn’t convinced, but I was at the point where I was willing to try anything and everything. “Good. Where do I meet him?”
“There’s an old well in Eagle Mountain. Take Pony Express until you reach Hidden Hollow Elementary, and you’ll see it on the right-hand side. It’s fenced off. Go into the well, and you’ll find Porter. It’s where he spends his time.”
In a well? Random.
I suppose he didn’t have much to do with his time, being dead.
She gave me a picture of the man—long hair, full beard—and I pocketed it, thanked her, and headed to my car.
It took about twenty minutes to get there, and I was disappointed to find that the well was completely filled. Why build a fence around
it? No one was in danger of falling into this.
But as I stared, a hole opened up. How did it know who I was? Had Porter done something to make it recognize me? I glanced around, ensuring no one was watching before skirting the fence and climbing my way down.
The sides of the well were bricked, giving me finger and toe holds, but it was still very difficult. At first, the well was completely dry, but the farther I went, the moister it became. More than once, I slipped and nearly fell.
I should’ve brought gear. How was I going to get back up?
Refusing to see what was in store for me on my return trip—knowing it would just discourage me—I decided I’d cross that bridge when I got to it. For the moment, I concentrated on getting down safely.
Once I was at the bottom, I was grateful to find it only had about a foot of water in it. I hadn’t even considered what I’d do if it were full.
“Porter?” I whispered.
No answer. The well was dark and smelly with an earthy stench that wasn’t altogether unpleasant, despite being foreign.
I turned on the flashlight app in my phone and pointed it around. The well was about ten feet across—plenty big—and the side of it to my left had been cut away, revealing a crudely dug tunnel. It was obvious I needed to go over there.
Taking care where I stepped—I couldn’t see the bottom of the tunnel for the water—I made my way slowly. After about twenty feet, I heard voices.
“I still can’t believe you’re okay with this place,” a man said. “Everyone tells me that Porter—the famed Porter—was afraid of this well and all the surrounding acres.”
“Didn’t you ever hear the stories? No? I didn’t need to hear ’em—I witnessed ’em. This place is haunted.”
“Yeah, it is,” the first voice responded. “By us.”
Raucous laughter echoed down the tunnel, pinging sharply off the sides.
The tunnel curved to the right and abruptly ended in a largish room. A big table was in the middle of it, and seated around that table were five men and one woman. All were dressed in Wild West period clothing. All were ghosts. They were playing poker and drinking beer.
I recognized Porter immediately from the picture. His long, brown, slightly curly hair billowed out on either side, and his full beard had streaks of gray in it.
Porter looked up. “Oh, you’re here.”
“Yes, sir.”
He got to his feet. “Please excuse me,” he said to his friends. “I have business to attend to.”
He tipped his hat to the woman, checked that his revolvers were holstered, and then we started back down the tunnel.
After we’d gone about ten feet, he said, “You have someone you need taken care of?”
“Yes. Nothing I’ve done so far has worked.”
“Leave it to me. When I pull the trigger, intending to kill, they’re dead.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
“Good. Glad to hear my reputation is still sound.” He stopped me, a serious expression on his face. “Why do you want this man dead?”
“Because he murdered my family. One at a time, while I watched, after he tortured them for hours. He still has my mother, and he tortures her regularly to manipulate me. Also, he’s blackmailing me into killing innocent people. The next one on my list is the woman I’m in love with, and I can’t bear the thought of killing her.”
Porter stared at me. “Well, heck, son. Any one of those things would have been good enough.” He adjusted his hat, his eyes still on me. “I needed to ask. I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t need killing.”
“Thank you for your help.” I was trying hard not to get my hopes up. I couldn’t even imagine being free of the Shadow Prophet’s lies and manipulations. Of his cruel ways and horrible methods.
We reached the end of the tunnel back at the bottom of the well, and I looked up. It was still open. I was glad to see the foot and hand holds, but I didn’t look forward to the climb, especially with wet shoes and socks. I couldn’t wait to change out of them and into the backup pairs I kept in my trunk. Rather than waiting around, Porter disappeared.
“I’ll be here,” he said, calling down from above.
Not fair.
I started up. It was dirty, wet work at first, and then it was dirty, dry work. It took me a good thirty minutes to reach the top. By the time I finally got there, I was feeling it in my shoulders and arms. It had been a long time since I’d last worked on climbing, and my muscles were annoyed with me. Thank goodness I’d kept up on my physical training in general. My life really did depend the shape I was in.
Porter gave me a hand, pulling me over the side, and I rested against the fence, enjoying the feel of solid ground beneath me again.
Once I’d caught my breath, I swapped out my wet shoes and socks for the extras in my trunk, hoping I’d remember to clean up the wet ones. Then Porter and I got in the car. It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t open the door before taking his seat. I’d been around a lot of crazy things since starting my line of work, but ghosts usually weren’t one of them. It was kind of fun seeing how he handled things.
“How would you like to get there?” I asked. “I don’t foresee you wanting to fly. You obviously wouldn’t have a seat, and I don’t think you’d be okay with people walking or pushing luggage carts through you.”
“Oh, no, oh, no,” he said. “I’ve never been up in one of those doohickeys, and I don’t intend to start now. We can take a train.”
I glanced over at him, eyebrow raised before remembering the time period he came from. “No, thank you. Not when I’ve got a car that is perfectly acceptable. It’ll be faster if we drive.”
Porter shrugged. “Suits me. Not sure why you asked in the first place.”
He had a point.
I settled in for the long drive, tucking my nervous anticipation away until I could use it to fuel my charge for freedom.
34
As we drove east, Porter told me interesting stories about the city of Lehi.
“It was much smaller back in my day than it is now,” he started off by saying.
Yeah . . . that wasn’t a surprise. The city had become headquarters for many dominant tech companies in the country. From what I’d heard, it had practically exploded overnight, going from six or seven thousand people to over sixty thousand in just a few years.
Porter motioned to the Point of the Mountain. “I even had my own brewery up there. Man, do I miss those days.” He was silent for a moment, obviously lost in thought, then said, “Well, anyway, I lived in Lehi for about four years. ’Course, back then, it wasn’t called Lehi. We called it Sulfur Springs. And then it was Dry Creek. And then Evansville. And maybe one other name I can’t remember.”
He tapped my shoulder to get my attention, even though he already had it. “This is crazy. While it was called Evansville, the guy it was named after petitioned that they change the name to Lehi. Why he didn’t want a town named after him, I never understood. I didn’t back then, and I don’t now. He hasn’t exactly explained himself since.”
We fell into companionable silence for a while, both stuck in our own thoughts.
“Tell me more about this Shadow Prophet,” Porter said. “That’s what you call him, isn’t it?”
“It’s what he likes to be called, yes.” I thought back to the first time I’d met him so many years ago. “I was eighteen when I met him. I’d been kidnapped and taken to a different planet. He found me there while I was in the middle of trying to figure out who I was and how I could be independent while still a slave.” I fell silent for a moment, lost in my memories. I still couldn’t believe I’d ever experienced any of that. “I’d grown and developed a lot, and he regularly complimented me on the ways I was teaching myself.”
I sighed. “Looking back, he was prepping me to be a future assassin. Just like my slave owners had. And the bounty hunter who first kidnapped me. Everyone seemed to think it was what I’d been meant to do.” My slave owners had made
me assassinate high-profile Elder Things and other monsters on their planet. I didn’t feel as much guilt for those murders—I really, truly had been a slave back then. Besides, all the aliens needed to die, in my opinion.
“Why were so many people interested in you acting as an assassin?”
I shrugged. “My dad was in the CIA.” At Porter’s confused expression, I said, “He was basically a lawman.”
Porter nodded. That, he understood.
“And he was very good at it. He spent hours each week keeping up on his physical abilities. I started training with him when I was three.” I glanced at him. “Mind you, I didn’t become serious about it until I was eight or nine. He never once made me do anything, but I know he found a lot of joy in it. I was his only child who liked that sort of thing. I loved the natural high that happened after a good workout. And my dad loved sharing that part of his life with me.”
I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel, clenching my teeth as I thought about my dad. He’d been the first the Shadow Prophet had killed.
“Working out led to learning martial arts and boxing and pretty much every form of fighting my dad knew. By the time I was fourteen, I could fight—and win against—grown men, almost regardless of their size.”
“You were gifted, then,” Porter said.
“Yes, I was,” I responded. “It was the second most important trait that drew people to me.”
“What was the first?”
I pointed at my hair, now gray again. “An Arete with silver hair before Restarting. They wanted to control my powers, and in order to do that, they had to control me.”
“Growing up, I always wanted to be an Arete,” Porter said. “Seemed all the best people were Fourths.”
“I haven’t known many good ones.”
“Is that a product of your current employment, or representational of how things really are?”
Shadow Prophet (Midnight Chronicles Book 1) Page 14
