MADNESS: Book One of The Shadow-Keepers Series

by Jas T. Ward

  Even now, as the man walked, the streetlights dimmed and some even went out to make the shadows a longer, deeper dark.

  The man didn’t seem to notice, and appeared so lost in his thoughts, even when one streetlight shattered overhead, the sprinkling of glass like urban glitter raining down went unfelt, sparks falling like electric rain.

  What Epsilon could do with that power: cause blackouts in the city, damage the Grid until it weakened and allowed his Eaters to not only overtake the city, but beyond to eventually overtake the whole world, and literally make a Grid free Hell on Earth.

  It would be the step he needed in his hunger for vengeance, in devouring and destroying Heaven’s precious children of man once and for all.

  Epsilon scanned the street before he stepped out of the dark shadows to follow the man, the city seeming quieter than usual in the wee hours of the morning.

  Maybe just as fate must have been watching how this was going to transpire, perhaps the city was an audience as well.

  The man was weaving and stumbling, knocking over trash cans only to right himself and keep moving forward. Epsilon looked up to see where the man’s destination might be and saw the lights of the Bridge through the fog moving off the bay. Ah, how sweet.

  The Breaker was actually trying to make it back to the Grid under the Bridge. He could not let that happen.

  He picked up his own pace to stand behind the man and whisper in his ear. “Where are you going, dark one?”

  Reno stiffened to a stop as he heard the voice that he had been hearing in his head now outside of his head, behind him.

  Gasping in pain as he threw a hand out to brace his stance on a light post to not fall down, he dropped his head to look over his shoulder and actually saw someone attached to the voice this time.

  The man was dressed in a black designer suit with a pure white shirt and no tie. Expensive shoes adorned his feet as Reno’s eyes traveled down the perfectly pressed slacks. Pulling his gaze back up to take in an ageless handsome face under stark pure white hair, he frowned as he looked into the man’s bright blue eyes. The hood of his sweatshirt fell down as he tried to remember who this man was without knowing him, but Reno felt like he should. Like a forgotten memory.

  Very few things shocked Epsilon after centuries of being alive. After living through tragedy and witnessing atrocities against anything that lived. But as the Breaker’s face was exposed in the moonlight, it was Epsilon’s turn to stumble back causing him to hit a parked car to stare at the man.

  “No... How?”

  Before Reno could respond the man had him in his arms in a tight hug as Reno weakly shoved against him, feeling like whatever life he had left was going to be crushed out of him by the hold. The man stepped back and cupped his face, a tear-filled sadness in his eyes.

  Reno frowned, confused at the man’s reaction as he croaked out, “Do I know you? How were you in my head?”

  Epsilon searched the Breaker’s eyes and confusion set in as he saw no recognition, not even a shadow of knowing who he was. And it hit him. How dare they...

  He shoved Reno away only to grab the front of his grimy sweatshirt to slam him against the light pole. “I was in your head because I was hunting you down. And now I know why. Who did this? Who set this trap? Who? Bounce? Yin Yang? It was that fucking bitch wasn’t it!? Answer me!” He pulled Reno forward only to slam his back against the metal pole once more with bone snapping force. “Who?”

  Reno’s head went fuzzy at the force of the hit, with black swimming into his vision from the shock to his spine. He brought his hands up to wrap around the man’s wrists to keep from falling down.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just want to go home.”

  Epsilon let out a roar of rage and threw Reno out into the street, sending him airborne with the power of it, only to crash into a heap in the middle. The fog had given way to a gentle rain that silently fell from the sky and coated everything in a shiny sheen of water.

  Reno struggled to get to his hands and knees, his head exploding with pain even worse than before as he swayed with weakness. He looked over to see the man stalking towards him as Reno somehow managed to get to his feet to try to run away, but could only manage a stumbled walk as he slipped on the wet asphalt.

  “Sundown! Please!”

  But all he got in exchange for his plea was more pain blooming and erupting in his head, which caused him to fall back to his hands and knees from it.

  Sundown was screaming as if his dark side was fighting some battle of his own inside their head.

  And both of them were swiftly losing.

  He was crawling when the man walked up and kicked him so hard in the ribs with those expensive shoes that bone cracked and sent him rolling into the side of trolley stop stand.

  Must Run! Run! Run! Run! We must run!

  If Reno had the time to figure out who that voice was he would have, but before he could even catch a ragged, painful breath from a punctured lung, the man was hauling him back up to press him against the side of the stop wall. He grabbed the man’s perfect suit jacket, not caring about the black blood he smeared there on the expensive cloth. The man didn’t seem to care or notice either.

  Epsilon had never been so enraged in his entire existence. How dare they try a ploy like this? To use something so precious as a pawn to pull him out and trap him.

  Even now the Grid must surely be closing in on him, as their bait, infused with dark energy, like cheese in a rat trap, was in a package sure to lure him. They must have known he couldn’t resist.

  They were wrong.

  Reno was trying to catch his breath, throat tight with pain as he now searched the eyes of the man who had him pinned. There was something so familiar there, and he frowned as once again his mind was too jumbled to figure it out. “You said you’d help me.” His voice cracked as he grasped the man’s suit in shaking hands, his legs feeling like they were going fail him and send him to his knees. He didn’t want to beg, but he would so maybe being on his knees would work out all right.

  Epsilon sneered at Reno, lip curling up off long dangerous fangs to come in close and hiss. “I lied.”

  At first the pain didn’t register through the haze of suffering that Reno had been walking around in for weeks. But then the white hot torment registered as his eyes went wide and his mouth opened to scream. But before one single sound could be made, that pain folded and overlapped into a newer one as Epsilon stepped away to an arms length.

  Reno looked down and saw a blade almost buried to the blood guard in his stomach right below his sternum. Black blood bubbled out as if a soda pop bottle had sprung a leak.

  He couldn’t breathe as he finally crashed to his knees, hands still trying to grab at the man’s clothes to keep from face planting. He looked up in complete confusion as the man glared down at him with either love or hatred, Reno wasn’t really sure. Or why he saw both.

  “Why? I...” he looked back down at the blade as his arms fell, unable to hold their own weight, as he swayed on his knees. His voice was failing him now as he saw the Bridge so close yet now, eternally far in the soft falling rain. “I just wanted to go home.”

  Epsilon let out a sound of disgust and bent down to grasp the hilt of the blade. “And now you can.”

  With a sudden move he slashed the dagger upward, cutting through muscle, bone and heart to tear a path of death until it came free with a splatter of gore and blood.

  Reno blinked and actually felt his heart try to beat despite being sliced in two in his ripped apart chest. The pain whispered away as his body decided what was the point. All sound became like being inside a cocoon of a soft fuzzy blanket. Like the one on Sophia’s bed they used to hide under and surprise Witch.

  “I love you Candyman. Always remember that okay?”

  “Eno? Never leave us ‘kay? Yous make mommie happy.”

  He smiled as their voices whispered in his head, a gift from his soul in the last few seconds of his life. He f
ell over sideways to hit the pavement hard with a bone clattering drop, his last sight that of the bridge so close to home.

  Epsilon wiped the blade on his sleeve, looking down at the too dark blood and gave it no further thought as the Breaker fell over.

  Squatting down to gently touch the man’s cheek, watched as the light faded from his eyes, death stilling the muscles and the blood flow. The rain curled around the darkness as if to carry it into the drain, like the city needed a gift from the man’s soul. It would reach the bay, but its host never would.

  Epsilon tilted his head to brush wet hair from Reno’s cooling forehead to say to him soft and tender, “I’m sorry they made me do this to you son. It’s not personal, but I won’t be made a fool of. And I remember our promise. I will make them pay.”

  Laying Reno’s body gently on the wet pavement as the rain began to cry harder from the sky, he stood up and walked away.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Good-bye Candyman

  It was the muffled sounds of car doors hushed by the stillness of night that awoke Emma as she slept exhausted on the couch in the living room. She hadn’t slept in their bed since the night Reno had been shut out of her life by her own foolish judgment and actions.

  Sitting up thinking the noise had maybe been the remaining figment of a dream, she heard the sound of an engine and then the silence of it being shut off.

  Throwing the afghan off before she got to her feet, she ran to the back door where the private driveway for deliveries sloped away from the backside of the house, her heart racing as hope lit up her weary nerves, she threw the door open. “Reno!”

  Emma ran right into the broad chest of Bounce, whose hand was upraised to knock. “You found him! Oh thank god!” She went to go around him and he gently took her arm in his hand.

  “Yes Emma. We did.”

  It seemed as if ice crystallized in Emma’s blood at the tone of Bounce’s words as her eyes came up to meet his. They were a soft dark grey that matched the color of his expression which was flushed with sadness.

  “Oh no. No. No. No.”

  Emma felt her knees give and didn’t realize she had hit the cool tile of the floor, Bounce following her descent to wrap her into a hug.

  The emotions from the night of her parent’s death came slamming up into the front of her here-and- now as she beat her fists against the god’s chest. The god had been there that night too, as it was his eyes then that told her they were too late when he opened that van door.

  “Please. Not Reno. Tell me it’s not true?” Emma’s last word screamed in anguish. “Please!”

  Bounce held her tight and wished he could change the answer he had to give her, but knew he could not. So rather than even try to hide the reality, he gave her all the pain at once, as the deepest cut was best dealt swift, or some bullshit like that.

  “We found his body about an hour ago. I’m so sorry, Emma. Someone slaughtered him. We don’t know who. And we don’t know why. I thought you might want him here.”

  Emma’s eyes looked past Bounce’s arm to see the San Francisco Sanitation van backed up to the loading bay of the shop. Evan and Mark were opening the back doors as other Relays stood guard. She knew under those dark jackets were weapons to make sure no one used this time to make any moves.

  She let out a whimper of pain as a black rubber body bag was pulled out of the black van and carefully carried between Evan and Mark as they made their way up to the house. Burying her face into the Bounce’s shirt as the tears released in a flow of pain, she knew they had all let him down.

  And once again, Reno had paid the price for them all.

  “Emma?”

  She was curled up in the corner of her room, her head on her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs which were drawn up to her chest. She knew that in the living room people had started to show up.

  Breakers. Relays. What was left of her family.

  But she didn’t want to see any of them. She didn’t want to hear their words of consolation and apology, for those words just seemed hollow and only sparked rage and guilt. She just wanted to be alone with Reno while she could.

  Looking up at the soft voice at the bedroom door, she saw Mr. Hahn standing there holding an ornate wooden box and a butcher paper wrapped package. Emma let out a sob and ran over for him to hug her tight, even though he was so much shorter and smaller, causing him to almost drop what he carried.

  Shushing her, he stepped back so he could close the door to step into the room. “I brought this.” The ancient’s eyes went to Reno’s body on the bed. “For him.”

  Emma smiled a sad tear filled smile at the man and took the objects. The box she knew. It was filled with oils and herbs they used to prepare the body of someone of the Grid before they were fed to the fires after death. She had never used Mr. Hahn’s supplies and felt honored that he was allowing her to use them now on Reno.

  Setting the box on the dresser, she carefully opened the package and let out a soft gasp of amazement at its contents. She brushed her fingers over the finest white silk judogi belted top with matching drawstring pants which was part of the ritual of goodbye on the Grid.

  But the part that had Emma crying was the red embroidered emblem of Mr. Hahn’s family name on the left side, which would lie over Reno’s heart.

  It was red with a twisted dragon around two twin crossed swords. Reserved for only those of Mr. Hahn’s bloodline, she was confused as to why it was on Reno’s burial clothes. “I don’t...?”

  But then Emma realized why as she met the old man’s eyes and saw tears in them as well. “You helped. Didn’t you? To make him?”

  Mr. Hahn gave a curt and swift nod as his body was stone stiff. Emma had known Mr. Hahn since her parents had died and she was allowed to train to use her healer’s powers. She had never known him to be somber for he usually always had a smile and quick humor, even in the most grave of situations. She had seen the man laugh and tell jokes as a Relay lay bleeding out on his table just so they would smile before dying. He said a happy soul took the swiftest flight to the light.

  But all that was gone from the small ancient god as Mr. Hahn stood there with sadness coming off him in waves.

  He walked over to the bed and placed his hand over Reno’s. “He was special. Even if he hated my soup. He was special.” Mr. Hahn looked over at Emma and said softly with a tone of tenderness.

  “We did not know if he would work. At first? He didn’t. He was like puppet with broken strings.” Patted Reno’s hand before he then sighed.

  “But he wanted it so bad. He worked hard. Harder than any I have seen work for anything. And he never complained. He never took things for granted.” Mr. Hahn reached up to brush his fingertips over Reno’s heart. “He had such big heart. It was his soul, Hell held or not.”

  Mr. Hahn looked over at Emma as tears dripped off his whiskered jaw.

  “And it beat for only you. You were beauty to his beast. We forgot about love when we made him. It was what made him want to be. I will never forgive myself for forgetting that love. Love should never be forgotten.” Mr. Hahn looked back at Reno one last time before turning away to face her.

  “If love is forgotten, the price is too high to pay. The debt is never met.”

  Emma pressed the cloth of the judogi to her face to catch her tears, hot against the cool silk. “We all let him down. I don’t know how I’m supposed to ever live with myself, Mr. Hahn. This is my fault.”

  Mr. Hahn clucked his tongue and came over to rub a hand on her arm. “No. We all have fault. We will help you bear the weight when you are weak.”

  Emma nodded as he gave her one last hug before leaving, not even looking back at Reno on the bed for she knew the sight hurt the small god too much.

  Emma wanted to totally break down to cry for days but as she stood there she knew what she owed Reno. Wiping away her tears, she carefully placed the judogi on the end of the bed before she then walked over to the bedroom door to call into the living room.
She didn’t even recognize her own voice due to it sounding so weak and pained.

  “Rose? Lily? Can you help me?”

  She closed her eyes as she was wrapped in the embrace of her two younger sisters, their tears now joining the warm flow of her own. Standing there, as they had done so many times before for other Breakers, she couldn’t help but remember when the last time they had to do it in pain and through their tears.

  When their brother had been killed.

  Stepping back, wiping tears that just didn’t want to stop with the back of her hands, no words were needed as Rose walked over to take the box in her hand and then went into the bathroom.

  Using a large crystal bowl from the shelf, Rose filled it up with warm water and poured some scented oil into the clear flow, followed by rosemary and lavender sprigs from Mr. Hahn’s box. The god had most likely picked them fresh this morning from his personal bushes of the herbs at the clinic.

  Turning off the tap, Rose sprinkled a handful of rock salt, taken from the sea that fed the bay, into the mix and gently stirred it with her fingers.

  “Emma, we can do this. You don’t have to.”

  Emma was now standing on one side of the bed as Lily stood on the other with a pair of silver shears from the box in her hand. Emma let out a ragged breath and held her hand out. “I can do this. I need to do this. For him, because it’s the last thing I’ll be able to do.”

  Rose gave her an encouraging yet sorrowful smile as she placed the shears in Emma’s outstretched palm. Together they worked on cutting away Reno’s bloodied and dirty clothes.

  Emma let out a small sad sobs or whimpers when each bruise and cut was exposed as the cloth was pulled away. But it was when they cut away the t-shirt that she couldn’t stop the high pitch wail of pain at the damage to his chest.

  It was if someone had tried to sever his torso from his body with a vicious cut. No human could have done such a blow as muscle, bone and everything in-between had been cut clear through. Definitely not an Eater.