Harold’s time would never come because Time didn’t care about someone’s goals and dreams. That bitch never stopped; the clocks continued to tick and tock; the world still spun. Yeah, even if you never achieved your dreams, Time would never relent.
Harold’s time was now, and it had took him awhile to accept that, but it was true. Time wouldn’t wait for him to seize the moment. He — they — had a chance to make a difference in this horrible world, and he meant to do so. Demons and Vampires and Shadow Eaters be damned.
“You can get that damn Demon blade off of my back,” Frank said in a whisper.
“No way, buddy. I don’t control it anyway. It’s not mine.”
“You should’ve just left the Demon bitch to die.”
Harold thrust the blade forward, jamming the tip against Frank’s jacket. The blade looked as bad as Sahara, but the point was still deathly sharp. So naturally, the jean jacket ripped like tissue paper, and Frank jolted forward, turning around with his bow raised and a dark fire in his eyes.
Harold let the blade fall.
Those eyes.
He had seen those eyes before, but where?
The two Mortals stared at each other. Harold’s guard lowered, transfixed on the black pools — black as…the Shadow Eaters, yes.
He’d all but tried to block out Charlie and Beth’s eyes, tried to think of it as a really vivid and horrendous night terror. But seeing Frank’s had brought the feeling of dread, those black snakes squirming in his gut, back to the forefront of his mind.
Not far away, a beast roared, and not in his head. Harold’s heart leapt into his throat. The flesh that had been untouched by the Spellfire — which was not much — raised into bumps.
And Frank blinked; to Harold, it seemed to be in slow motion. When his eyes showed again, the darkness vanished, replaced by an electric blue heavy with the images only a man like Frank could’ve seen.
Harold shook his head, had he imagined it? Had his own venom given him a filter where he only saw the world in the light of malice? He didn’t know for sure, but he knew Sahara’s breathing began to get wildly erratic, her heartbeat slower.
But Frank spun around with that same young man’s grace, raised the crossbow with smoothness.
“This way is a dead end unless you wanna use your Demon speech to tell that asshole out there to let us walk free.”
“I’m not a Demon. How many times do I have to tell you that?” Harold said.
“I won’t believe you until I see you bleed. There was a lot of black blood back in that room, Storm.”
Harold tried to keep his face as blank as possible, but the muscles in his jaw twitched. Because his blood wouldn’t be the same color as Frank’s. Black had become the new red. He breathed a sigh of relief realizing where his left hand, punctured by one of those arrows, had been — safely nestled under Sahara’s legs. And the adrenaline had taken the pain, though he knew he’d feel it the minute he was safe.
Harold just shrugged Frank’s remark off and spun back towards the throne room, more worried about a pissed-off Demon than an old man with a crossbow. There had to be another way out.
But when he spun around, a wave of black venom roared through the corridor, and he stopped, nearly dropping Sahara.
“Go, Storm.”
The pounds from the stairs grew closer. Talons clicked on the wooden steps. A roar echoed down through the darkness, but the wave choked out the sound of both that and Frank’s voice; it made both of them a slight whisper.
Harold couldn’t do much of anything.
He felt a push at his back, the cool metal of the crossbow stinging his exposed skin, nudging him forward. His neck slowly spun around, a look of defeat written all over his face.
The beast’s horns emerged first, its bulk second, larger than any thing — or animal for that matter — Harold had ever seen. Scaly skin shined like it had rolled in ink. But Harold knew better — that wasn’t ink; it was blood.
The blood of friends and enemies.
CHAPTER 10
Frank’s arrows whistled by Harold’s head as he backed away from the steps. Yet Harold stood frozen, Sahara feeling like a pillow in his arms.
“Move, Storm!” Frank bellowed.
Another arrow twanged, this one ruffling Sahara’s hair like a small breeze.
“Move! Move!”
But Harold couldn’t. His options were drown or get eaten, or drop Sahara and try to swim through the roaring wave of black venom. He wasn’t a good swimmer, and no way in Hell would he drop Sahara, which also meant that he couldn’t fight either.
The Demon didn’t care about those things; neither did the wave.
An arrow struck the Demon in the thigh, and the beast’s knee buckled. Rippling skin and jagged bones jutting out from beneath it.
“Goddamn it, Storm, drop the girl and fight. I can’t hold him off myself.”
The wave had slowed down, suspended in mid-air like a paused movie. Maybe he wouldn’t drown after all.
In all the chaos, Harold breathed a sigh of relief, then the Demon roared again; a sound the clearheaded Harold heard with all too much intensity. He felt the hot breath of the damn thing right near the back of his neck. The poor hat on his head — rippled and torn all over, speared by an arrow, and not even two days old — blew wildly down the hallway as if Harold got caught in the middle of a tornado.
Frank’s crossbow clattered off of the floor, and he screamed. The Demon held him with one hand like a giant playing with an action figure and he brought the man up to his bared teeth, jaws opening wider than the mouth of a tunnel. The fangs dripped with black venom; sour breath destroyed the earthy scent of the Tree; and Frank looked into the blackness like a man sick of life and ready for death.
Harold watched with wide open eyes, until the beast grunted. And the noise smacked Harold in the face with sensibility. He didn’t know what to do. Frank was halfway in the beast’s maw, kicking and fighting, but he could see the fight dying within him, like a man giving up.
He cradled Sahara like a sick child. He had no Deathblade. No Wolves. No strength. No back up. A head full of venom, himself. And the old man had tried to kill him, actually. They weren’t exactly friends. Plus the eyes — those black eyes. It had just been a minute, but surely Harold wasn’t crazy, was he? He’d seen it.
And now, he was given a choice, and as the horrible breath of the monster filled the hall, and the sounds from the black wave of venom clashed behind him, the right choice became clearer.
He ran, maneuvering by the distracted Demon.
His feet bounded up the three flights of stairs to a room he faintly remembered, that might’ve been the room he had first entered when Sahara could still stand on her own. There they had waited for someone to direct them to the King. But now the room’s walls dripped with black ichor, like drying motor oil, and the smell reminded Harold of his Grandfather’s funeral. That sickening sweet smell of death and flowers. Earth and decay.
His head whirled.
He heard the Demon shriek, before Frank’s faint voice escaped from three levels below, yelling: “No!”
Harold shook it off. The man would’ve killed him as soon as he had the chance anyway, he tried to tell himself. Frank was a loose cannon. A man thirsty for revenge. Quick to pull the trigger on whomever he could place blame on.
And Harold could find his own way — after all, he wasn’t the old Harold anymore, right? He was the new lean, mean, burnt machine that destroyed the supernatural for shits and giggles.
The new Harold wouldn’t leave a man to his death, that black voice inside of his head hissed. But the Harold we want would. I am oh so proud of you.
The magic door, the one that had glowed orange and amber when Sahara pushed it open was ripped away. And in the trunk of the great tree stood a gaping hole. Fractures and splinters edged the outline. Black lines of death ran up the bark like cancer.
Outside, the piny scent of the forest became the smell of an upturned graveyar
d. Half a Vampire laid in a pool of blood at his feet. An arm here, an arm there. A crumpled Demon corpse hung from a broken tree. The dark outlines of birds pecked away at the scaly flesh. Harold cringed at the sight. He hoped it wouldn’t lead to a full scale plague somewhere down the road.
Further on, John sat against a tree, looking peaceful until Harold got closer and saw the gash in his neck, and the glassy-eyed, dead look on his face. On the other side, a hand poked from a pile of splintered wood. The nails were painted a bubble-gum pink and alternating black. Harold’s stomach roiled. It was Cinder — or at least part of Cinder. He didn’t have the courage to keep going. Didn’t want to see anymore destruction. After all, Harold Storm was the cause. There was no denying that. They wanted him, and they wanted Sahara.
It was the end.
He shook the thought away, then took a look at the battered Protector in his arms, and remembered the fact that he might not be the new Harold at all.
The Protectors were weak; the evil, strong.
And here Harold stood the sole survivor of a battle he would never be ready to face.
“The G-Grand Witch,” Sahara said. “We m-m-must see the Grand Witch.”
Harold’s ears perked up. Her voice sounded as if Death had a firm grip around her ankles and was dragging her down, but the softness was still there. And in the dead — literal dead — silence of the forest, it was a gift from the Heavens.
“Where, Sahara? Where?”
“The Lake — sh-sh-she lives on the Lake.”
“What lake?” Harold asked, but her eyes were already fluttering closed, the whites showing. Her lips parted once more, but only a rattling wheeze came out, followed by a streak of black leaking from her mouth, which he had set her down to wipe away, then scooped her back up as fast as he could. Though his arms cried out in protest.
But the few leaves that hung from the great tree hundreds of feet up into the dark sky rustled, and a few birds — or possibly bats — flapped their wings as they fled. A roar rippled through the entire girth of the trunk, a satisfied, almost pained roar.
The Demon had to have been through with Frank now, and Harold didn’t want to hang out and see that horrible face again, especially if it was smeared with the blood of what might’ve been a potential friend.
No, he didn’t want that at all, and he headed for the Audi, mumbling to whatever gods would listen, praying that the thing was still in one piece and he could stay conscious long enough for him to get to whatever lake his delirious partner spoke about.
The only lake close by was Lake Shallows. Years of pollution had made it less of a lake and more of a toxic waste dump now. A person with as much gumption to dub themselves the Grand Witch couldn’t have the nerve to live at a place like that. Could they?
He didn’t know, but Harold Storm was prepared to find out if it meant saving Sahara.
CHAPTER 11
The sports car roared to life.
Harold felt the engines rumble under the tight grip he had on the steering wheel. Sahara laid in the back, mumbling. She had felt so hot as he strapped her in, using all three seat belts, because the way he intended to drive from that forest was that of a drunk Nascar driver.
But he was so exhausted.
He’d done so much, and as he backed down the worn path until the trees opened up and he could swing the car around one-eighty degrees, his ruined eyelids grew heavy. He wondered if he could still sleep at all. How did one do that without eyelids?
Awkwardly, he supposed.
The air conditioning was on full-blast. He’d noticed an increase — maybe a few degrees — since leaving the terminal, since the Portal had been opened.
The Portal, right. He’d forgotten about the Portal. What with the Vampires nearly killing him, then the Demon, and a giant bat-freak, and then some crazed old man…oh, and Sahara descending into a buzzing delirium and his own dark thoughts.
(You’re not supposed to be here.)
The Portal was the last thing on his mind, though it probably should’ve been the first.
He pulled out onto the highway, engine roaring, a/c blasting, and the radio tuned at a low volume (a reporter talked of the end of days and he wound up switching to an FM station to get the latest pop hits, because if Hell was going to come to Earth, it was going to arrive while listening to some teenaged asshole with little musical talent wearing jeans skinner than their ambitions).
The once deserted highway still looked deserted, just a different kind of deserted. Post-apocalyptical, perhaps.
A few cars had piled up on the shoulder near an exit into Flaxton Township, and up ahead he could see the distant glow of red taillights, but that must’ve been a few miles up. Didn’t matter. He meant to catch them and pass them if he had the chance.
But his phantom eyelids were so heavy; he might not get that chance.
The car swerved, ran over the bumps off to the side near the divider, jolting him back into full consciousness. Consciousness that didn’t last long, and he had to turn up that wretched pop song.
A sign told him an old Motel 8 was a few exits ahead, and he’d really debated pulling off towards it, but in the end settled for their parking lot. Because, like Sahara said, being a Protector didn’t mean barrels of money. Really all it meant was some pain, seeing scary some scary, unnatural shit, and a burnt skin suit.
The Motel 8 looked like it had been ransacked, but he got the feeling it always looked like that — end of days, or not. The brick was a washed out pink. Blinds hung in the windows crookedly with missing strips. The glass of the front door was cracked. Motel 8, high above the road, buzzed and flickered.
He parked between an old phone booth, one that had not been used since the first Nokia dropped, and a towering street lamp that, like the phone booth, no longer had any use.
He left the car on, the rumbling soothing him, rocking him to sleep like a baby.
Just fifteen minutes. A quick cat nap.
“The Lake…the Lake,” Sahara mumbled, but as Harold’s eyes got heavier, her voice faded.
And then he could no longer keep whatever was left of his eyelids open. And she’d have to wait. A power nap, that’s all. Then they could find the Lake. If it existed. He didn’t think it did. Could’ve been death babble — knew it was death babble.
The power nap, intended to be fifteen minutes, turned to an hour, and the sky rippled with flames. Outside, the temperature went from a cool, and calm seventy-five to a solid ninety degrees, and at that time of year on the cusp of Gloomsville, those numbers were unheard of.
Yet Harold Storm slept through it all like an infant, and as he snored in the Realm of Reality, he screamed in the Realm of Dreams.
A baby crawled towards him through the black muck.
Where was he at? A minute ago, a pop singer sang songs about how he’d ‘never leave you, girl.’ A sound of splashing water came to him, and he jumped. But the eyes, the glowing eyes approached. Eyes he’d somehow recognized.
Marcy’s eyes.
But Marcy was no baby, and Harold owned no time machine. The nose, too. He recognized that nose. It had stared back at him every time he’d looked in the mirror — and how vain he used to be, before all of the burns and the blisters and the festering wounds.
It was his nose, though much smaller and maybe a little cuter.
He reached at the crawling child, the one he knew to be his own. Valentine, he wanted to name her, but Marcy wouldn’t have it. Back in the throes of one of their heated fights, back in a simpler time, one Harold had not recognized until now. Until the responsibility and the pain cracked his shoulders. The weight of the worlds, the weight of the Realms snapped his spine.
The child balked, but the eyes didn’t.
“Come here,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”
He longed for the child’s touch, for something to remind him of the real world and break through the stuff of nightmares.
“But you already hurt me, daddy,” the child said — Valentine,
screw Marcy, the baby was named Valentine.
“No, no, I didn’t. It wasn’t my fault, it was your mother’s,” he said.
“I have no mother.” The voice broke into a sinister tone. “A mother does not murder their unborn.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Harold repeated.
He shook his head, felt the tears coming down his cheeks, wet and hot. Then raised a hand to brush them away, felt the smoothness of his skin — the wholeness.
“So be it,” the child said.
And it was a child no more.
Now it stood, as a Shadow, hunched over with its jagged outline.
Harold felt the fear seize him. He stood now, too, backing away into the darkness beyond him, not sure where it would lead. A hand struck a wall, cool and rocky, then his other hand reached out behind him, only the hand didn’t exist. And he touched nothing, took another step.
His heart nearly exploded as he plummeted into the abyss, as he looked up and saw the twisted face of a baby looking down at him like a full moon.
Soon the face grew to the size of a speck. Colder air rippled through him, and he stopped, landed in a lake with a hollow splash. Bubbles flew from his mouth, trying to escape to the surface too. The icy feeling froze his brain, and for some reason he opened his mouth to breathe — or scream — and his eyes followed suit.
But there was no more blackness. Only the crystal clear blue of water. And the coldness left him, replaced by a tropical current.
He had no longing for breath, no longing for answers. He had found the Lake, and Sahara was right to talk of it in death. It was so pleasant, so relaxing — a vacation for the mind and the body — no more dead children, no more Shadows.
He’d enjoy it while he could, enjoy it before he was back in Reality’s Realm, fighting for his life. But nothing good ever lasted long, especially for Harold Storm.
Because a corpse floated towards the surface, a thick metal chain swayed lazily from the its ankle. The skin looked like wet toilet paper, milky-white and bloated. Bits of flesh hung from the face, swayed with the current. A wild mane of white hair, one that could only belong to an old woman — or an old rock star — pointed towards the surface.
Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) Page 6
