The Torn Soul (The Sheynan Trilogy Book 3)

by Dylan Birtolo

  “I’m okay, I promise. Just a little exhausted after all the shifting and the fighting. It was almost more than I could handle. It’s a good thing you found me when you did.”

  Susan nodded, her eyes looking deep into his for a few moments before she grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it. She stood up and left, coming back shortly with a bottle of water.

  “Drink. You lost a lot of blood, so you need to replenish your fluids. The sooner you do that, the sooner you’ll be up on your feet again.”

  Darien knew better than to argue. He twisted off the cap and chugged three quarters of the bottle before putting it down again. He looked up at her and saw that the bruising on the side of her face was looking better, or at least the swelling had gone down. She still had a black eye, and the side of her neck was discolored, but other than that, she didn’t look too worse for the wear.

  “How are you doing?” He watched her carefully, knowing that especially in his current state, she would downplay her own injuries.

  “I’m all right. Could use a little more sleep but wanted to check on you. You’ve been out since before we got here. I was worried about how much blood you lost. Every time you squirmed in your sleep, a couple of the cuts would break open and you’d start bleeding again. I was getting ready to take you to a hospital, even though I know that would be a giant flashing sign giving away our location.”

  Darien felt tension he didn’t even know he had slide out of his shoulders as he listened to Susan talk. Her words were crisp and clear, and she didn’t limp or wince at all while talking or moving around the room earlier. He leaned to the side so he could prop himself up against the wall of the shower.

  “So… we’re safe?”

  “For the moment. I haven’t gone out much, except to get new bandages, but I haven’t seen anyone or anything to make me nervous. If the military knew where we went or what the truck looked like, they’d be on us by now. I think we’re okay for the moment. I just don’t know how long that’ll last.”

  Susan reached over and unrolled some of the paper from the roll, looking down and shredding it in her hands. The only sound in the room for a while was the tearing of the thin paper. When they got too small to tear, she wiggled her fingers over the trash can, discarding the pieces. After that, she lifted her head to look at Darien in the eyes.

  “So do you want to talk about it?”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Bridget.”

  “It isn’t the first time either of us have killed someone, Suz.”

  “No, but Bridget’s different and you know it. Whether you want to admit it or not, you two had a connection because of the fact that she’s the only other Sheynan you or anyone else has ever met. And she might…”

  Susan hesitated, and Darien looked up at her. She sighed and wrung her fingers a couple of times.

  “She might be the only other Sheynan you’ll ever meet. You said they were super rare and no one’s ever heard of two of them at the same time before.”

  With a shrug, Susan turned away from Darien, looking at the ground at her feet. Darien looked away too as he tried to wrap his mind around it. He found a small gouge in the edge of the tub and picked at it with his fingernail. When he started to talk, the words spilled out almost of their own volition, without him having any idea what direction he was going.

  “I don’t know. You’re right, it is different. I guess I just didn’t think about it that way. You know that I don’t want to kill anyone. It isn’t like I feel good about any of the people I’ve killed. But with her, it was different. I didn’t want to kill her. I actively wanted to find another way, no matter what. But she just wouldn’t give up. She kept fighting and kept shifting, pushing the boundaries and pushing our limits.

  “You didn’t see her at the end, Suz. It was terrifying. Her mind was gone and there was nothing of Bridget left. I was fighting for my life with a tiger. Not a Sheynan, not Bridget as a tiger, but an actual wild tiger that wanted nothing more than to rip my throat out. I was terrified. I just grabbed my knife and I stabbed. Over and over, hoping that she’d stop.”

  Susan slid across the floor, coming to sit down next to Darien on the edge of the bathtub without making a noise. She draped one of her arms across his shoulders, letting only the weight of her arm press against his body. He turned the water bottle in his hands, staring at it as he rolled it over and over. She leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder and letting her hair drape over his body. He could feel it caressing his skin where he wasn’t covered in bandages.

  “The worst part of it, the part that scared me the most, was that that’s what I’m going to turn into. I can’t run from it, no matter how hard I try. One of these days, I’m just going to turn into an animal and stop existing. The beast will be all that’s left.”

  When he stopped talking, he continued to stare down, his eyes losing focus. Susan reached out and ran her fingers through his hair, smoothing it and rubbing against his scalp with each pass. He opened his mouth to speak, but she shushed him. He collapsed against her, letting the water bottle smack against the ground. She closed her eyes and held him close to her chest.

  Chapter 20

  The next time Darien woke, sunlight punched him in the face as soon as he opened his eyes a crack. It took him a few seconds to adjust to his surroundings before he could make out even the vaguest of shapes in the room. Susan sat at the table, pouring over a map. Two coffee cups sat next to her arm, one of them with its lid off and steaming. She had a Sharpie in her fingers and chewed on it as her hand flattened the folded paper and moved it around.

  “Morning. Please tell me that’s coffee.”

  Susan turned in the chair and handed him the cup with the lid still on. Darien took a sip before bothering to sit up and winced as the hot liquid singed his tongue. But it woke him up and tasted good enough that all he could do in response was close his eyes and sigh.

  “When I went out to get breakfast, everything seemed quiet, so I think we’re in the clear. The truck is a little beat up in the front, but considering how much of a beast it is, people expect a bit of a ding or a dent here or there. As long as no one looks in the cab, I don’t think it’ll catch too much attention. I cleaned it up as best as I could but your clothes were a total loss. I tossed them into a dumpster a few streets away.”

  Darien sat up and rested his back against the wall. Some of the physical pain had come back, especially from the wounds with sutures, but it was manageable. He reached out for more coffee, trying to parse everything that Susan was throwing at him. As usual, she had gone above and beyond. Had she even gone back to sleep? He took a careful look at her while her attention was focused on the map. She seemed energized and refreshed compared to the previous evening.

  “My point is I think that we can make a run for the border to Canada. We aren’t that far away and it shouldn’t be too hard to get across. Obviously, we’ll either need to clean out the truck or get a new car before then, but we can manage that. Once we’re in another country, we don’t have to worry as much about the government folks chasing us down. I really think that’s our best bet.”

  “We can’t leave.”

  The Sharpie clattered against the table as Susan tossed it down and twisted to look at him, one eyebrow raised.

  “What do you mean we can’t leave? That was the whole point of getting off the base. We needed to leave or else they were going to kill us if we didn’t accept their offer.”

  “Something Bridget said, at the end.” Darien waved his hand in the air, gesturing vaguely as he referred to her death. He didn’t want to think about it too closely yet. Susan nodded and waved him on. “She said that the government agency was both the Shadows and the Arm. I think that, maybe, they’ve been calling the shots the entire time.”

  As Darien took another sip of his coffee, Susan sat silent, waiting for him to continue. Now that it had cooled a little and he was used to the temperature, he could get a full swallow.


  “You remember when we left the cabin, how all those shifters started showing up at once? We only knew two of them were Shadows. Some of them could have been members of the Arm as well. Because of what Omba said, I think some of them might very well have been. Bridget practically came right out and said it. She claimed that the agency that Karl works for sicced them on us. That’s why they showed up at the same time and attacked us, pretty much making us run right into the agency’s hands.”

  “Okay, but even if that was true, why does that mean we shouldn’t run away? If anything, I think that would give us more reason to get the hell away from them. It means they have even more power and resources at their disposal than we thought, so it’s going to be even more difficult to stay one step ahead.”

  “Because I don’t think we can run from them. There’s Shadows and Arm everywhere. If they really do call all the shots, they’re not going to let something as small as a national border stop them.”

  They sat in silence as Darien waited for Susan to digest the news. He could see it register in her body language as her shoulders slumped. She reached up with her hand and pinched the bridge of her nose, taking several deep breaths while she did so. When she finished she reached out and grabbed her own coffee, upending it over her mouth to get the last of the drops.

  “What do you want to do? I can tell you’ve got an idea from that look on your face.”

  She knew him too well.

  “The way I figure it, the Arm and the Shadows don’t realize they’re being controlled by the same group. Hell, they’ve been at war for generations apparently, so who knows how far this goes back. Can you imagine how much upheaval there’d be if they found out that someone was playing them against each other?”

  “If that’s true, and if you could prove it, it’d be utter chaos. That’s the kind of stuff that overthrows entire regimes of power.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I think we need to get that proof somehow and get it into the hands of people who will listen to me. You know Alyssa will at least let me say my piece, even if she does have orders to kill me. I’m pretty sure I could convince her. As for the Shadows, the only person I can think about reaching out to is Gregory Marks.”

  Susan shot to a standing position and her chair toppled to the ground behind her. She shook her head back and forth while muttering the word no several times as she paced back and forth in front of the bed. Darien waited until she stopped. It only took a single lap.

  “Are you insane? Do I need to remind you that he’s actively trying to kill you right now? And even when you two were talking, it was only because he thought he could manipulate you into joining his side?”

  “What other choice do I have? Any other Shadow is going to shoot me on sight and not listen to a single word I have to say. There’s still a chance that he wants me to team up. If I let him think that I’ve come around and want to join his team, I might be able to get my piece in and get him to believe me. I have to try. This only works if both the Shadows and the Arm decide to go into chaos mode. If only one of them does, we’re still dodging and living life by the seat of our pants. Something we already know that we can’t do forever.”

  “You realize this is a hell of a lot of gigantic ‘if’s’ we’re talking about here. I can’t even think of the words to describe how crazy of a long shot this is.”

  “We’ve pulled off crazy before. Besides, can you think of a better plan? It’s the only way that I see us having some time without spending it always looking over our shoulders. It could work, and if it does, it’ll be worth it.”

  A car horn blared outside as tires screeched across the pavement causing both of them to jump. Susan rushed over to the window to peer out around the curtain and relaxed when she saw it was just a driver letting out his frustrations at another vehicle for having trouble merging onto the highway. Susan came over and dropped onto the bed next to Darien, dancing her fingers across the sheets covering his legs.

  “How are you going to even get proof? The only lead we have is Karl Astor. I know you can sneak into his office without too much of a problem once you have your energy back, but his computer is going to be locked down tight.”

  “I’ll just have to go in there and watch him enter his password or whatever he does to unlock it, and then wait for him to leave again. I can’t think of any other way to do it short of stealing his computer and then finding someone who could break into it. I don’t think that’s a good option. Something tells me that whoever set up their security is going to be better than whoever we could randomly find to crack it.”

  “All right, so we get a couple of days of rest and then we visit the law offices. I remember how to get there, which is good since I’m betting you don’t even remember which exit it was.”

  Darien chewed on his lip and stared at the ceiling as he tried to remember. He knew that they went north from the military base and that they didn’t reach Seattle, but everything else looked more or less the same.

  “138?”

  Susan chuckled as she shook her head back and forth. She gave Darien’s leg a squeeze through the sheets.

  “Cute. There isn’t even an exit 138, but nice try. It was exit 132. I swear, you’d be lost without me.”

  “That’s why we invented GPS, so people like me didn’t need to remember all of this stuff.”

  “And this is why some of us actually pay attention to where we go and learn how to read maps, because you never know when you’re going to need to figure out how to get somewhere and not have your phone to count on. Come on, you should get up and about a little bit today. A little bit of exercise will help your energy come back faster so we might be able to head to those offices tomorrow or the next day.”

  Tossing back the sheets, Darien stood up and stretched, the bandages on his chest pulling as he reached out to either side. He grabbed his coffee and walked towards the bathroom, speaking over his shoulder as he went.

  “No, we need to go today. Before you object, think about it. Two of his agents were killed yesterday. I’m willing to bet that he isn’t going to stay around in that office for too long if he can help it. Or if he does, he might beef up security, since we know where it is. If he moves, we’re screwed. He’s our only lead on the agency and we only know where he is right now. We need to go back today.”

  Darien put his coffee down on the small shelf over the sink and grabbed the shaving cream, rubbing it over his face and starting his morning routine. Since he didn’t hear an immediate response, he figured Susan was weighing his words. She was probably trying to reconcile the fact that he was right with her concern that he needed more rest. It really was their only option. He turned on the water, waiting for it to start to steam before he shaved.

  That portion of his routine was easy, but taking a shower proved to be more difficult. The first step required removing all of his bandages. If he got into the shower with them, they were going to get drenched anyways and they weren’t the waterproof kind. As he unwrapped and unpeeled them from his body, he inspected his wounds one at a time.

  The slashes on his arms were, thankfully, not that deep and already scabbed over. It looked like he had run his arms through a paper shredder, but they would heal well. The scars would be impressive, not that he didn’t have enough of those already. The scratches on his face were also healing nicely, with puckered skin around the edges as it started to heal over the wound. Darien saved his torso for last; worried about what he would see when he looked at it.

  Some of the bandages stuck to him as he tried to pull them off, reopening the wounds as he peeled them free. As he thought, the wounds in his abdomen were sutured shut. He had four of them, the longest of which was a gash three inches long. Otherwise his stomach was covered in more small scratches than he could count. If he had any more wounds, he’d probably have more scabs than skin in that area. With the utmost care, he touched his stomach with the tip of his fingers. It looked worse than it felt, but he wouldn’t be able to be too physically active a
nytime soon.

  The shower was both a blessing and a curse. The hot water felt wonderful on his aching muscles and helped to revitalize him, filling him with energy as it cascaded down his back and ran down his legs. But when he turned around and felt the pressure against his front, the pain caused him to clench his jaw and grip the shower curtain rod for balance. At least he was awake now. Nothing like a shock of pain to drive out any vestiges of sleep.

  When he finished, he took his time drying off, making sure not to scrape at his wounds with the towel. As it was, several red spots appeared on the white fabric. He wasn’t even going to try to apply the bandages himself. He grabbed the open box of gauze rolls and walked out into the main room, holding them in front of him. Susan sat on the bed with a pair of scissors, waiting. Her fingers were light and barely brushed his skin as she tended to his wounds.

  “All right, if you think you’re up to it, we can go back today. I don’t want to, but I concede your point. But I’m going to wait in the parking lot the entire time. I’m not leaving you there. And you need to promise me you won’t shift more than once or twice. You know how much it drains you and we don’t know what it will do to you in your current state.”

  “I promise.”

  “Then get dressed. We need to stop at Best Buy and get a flash drive.”

  Chapter 21

  By the time that they got to the law offices, it was ten-thirty in the morning. The parking lot was mostly full of cars, which suited their purposes well. Susan parked on the side of the building near the back row where they still had a decent angle on the front door to the building. Darien looked up at the windows of the office and wished it was summer. It would be so much easier if the windows were open and he could just fly in. Sadly, they were not that lucky.

  However, the building did have ventilation billowing clouds into the cold air as the heating system worked to create a comfortable climate controlled environment. The ducts would be warm and difficult to bear, but they would give him access without needing to go through the front door. That was simply not an option. In human form, he’d probably be picked up before he even crossed the threshold. As a fly or some other inconspicuous creature, he’d be at the mercy of humans going where he needed to be.