Shadow Demons

by Sarra Cannon

  “No, Harper stays with me,” Jackson said, placing an arm in front of me as a guy near the back got off his bike and came toward me.

  I gasped and took a step back. I recognized the guy they called Cristo instantly. It was the same guy who had been watching me from the window of the pizza parlor a couple weeks ago. His beaded braids clacked together when he walked.

  “Don’t be difficult,” Lea said. “If you want my help, you play by my rules.”

  Jackson’s chest rose and fell. He looked from Cristo to me, then back again, his arm still raised in defense. “You have to promise me you’ll be very careful,” he said. “And we all stick together.”

  Lea’s jaw grew rigid and her lips thinned into a tight line.

  “Come on, mate,” Cristo said. “If we don’t move, we’ll all be in trouble here in a minute. I’ll take good care of her.”

  My eyes widened as Jackson slowly lowered his arm. “Where are they taking us?” I asked. “And who are these people?”

  “People?” Lea raised one eyebrow in a high arch and laughed. “You’ve got a lot to learn, little girl.”

  I shivered. The hatred in her voice terrified me. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to make her hate me so much, but disdain dripped from her words like poison.

  “I promise I’ll explain everything once we get there,” Jackson said. “You’ll be safe, I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I threw my arms around his neck. “I just want you to know that I love you,too,” I whispered in his ear, then kissed his neck. My declaration had been interrupted earlier, and I wanted to make sure he knew exactly how I felt about him.

  Jackson leaned down and swept me up into a kiss. Lea cleared her throat.

  “I’ll be right there with you the whole time,” he said. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  I nodded and reluctantly walked away from him. Cristo motioned toward his idling motorcycle. It was much bigger than Jackson’s, its engine so loud I could barely hear my own voice.

  “Got an extra helmet?” I shouted.

  Cristo’s eyebrows pinched together and he turned his head, questioning.

  “Helmet,” I said, pointing to my head. “You know, so I don’t fall on the pavement and crack my skull open?”

  Cristo smiled, his whole face lighting up with laughter. His teeth were bright white and perfectly straight. “You’re funny, mate” he said, then climbed onto the bike.

  I sighed. Awesome. I crawled on behind him and tentatively put my arms around his waist.

  In front of us, Jackson got on Lea’s bike. I couldn’t hear them, but they were arguing with each other about something. The sight of him with his arms around her waist made me want to scream.

  There was definitely something between them. When he’d said he knew a place we could go, I never dreamed he meant we’d be running away with some hot chick and her gang of thugs. I tried to ignore my jealousy. I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.

  He’d said they were old friends. Nothing more.

  Lea and Jackson sped off and the rest of the gang followed. Cristo and I rode in the middle of the pack. We were going so fast, I had no choice but to hold on tight, pressing my body close to this stranger.

  We rode through the deserted streets of Peachville, over the bridge that led out of town, and then on past the county line. Everything we passed was a blur. We had to be going over a hundred miles an hour. Around a tight turn, the motorcycle leaned so close to the pavement, I could swear my hair glided across the asphalt.

  I held tighter to Cristo’s waist.

  “Whatever you do, mate, don’t let go,” Cristo yelled over his shoulder.

  I peered around him to see if we were about to go around another corner or up a hill, but the road was a straight shot into the darkness. Still, I clung to him, my heart racing.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  I closed my eyes, my body tense. The motorcycle seemed to jump into the air, then I felt my body twist and turn. It felt the same as when Jackson had shifted into his shadow form. Suddenly, I understood why these people were his old friends.

  They were shadow demons.

  Fugitives

  We were shifting into shadows, becoming a part of the air around us. I didn’t dare open my eyes. I knew the ground wouldn’t be underneath us anymore.

  We flew through the air, dark shadows against a dark sky. My stomach flipped and lurched as we dipped and turned and changed directions so fast, I couldn’t tell which way was up anymore. I screamed into the back of Cristo’s jacket, unable to contain my fear.

  Then, suddenly, I was solid again. I lunged forward as the motorcycle landed back on the ground.

  I needed a minute to let my head stop spinning. I clutched the fabric of Cristo’s jacket tight in my fists, my face still buried in his back.

  “You okay back there?”

  I shook my head back and forth. I wasn’t sure what I was. Glad to be in solid form. Scared out of my mind. Confused. Anything but okay.

  Cristo peeled my hands open. “You can let go now, sweetheart. We’re safe here,” he said. When I didn’t move, he said, “Jack, you want to come get your girlfriend? I think she’s freaking out or something, man.”

  “She’s not his girlfriend,” Lea said. “She’s a human.”

  A warm hand on my back. Jackson’s voice in my ear. “It’s okay Harper, I’m here,” he said. “Come sit down by the fire and warm up a bit.”

  I hadn’t realized my body was shaking so much. When I opened my eyes, I realized we were very far away from Peachville. The moonlight illuminated the rocky cliffs. I could hear waves crashing against the shore below. There weren’t any rocky shores in Georgia. Heck, I wasn’t even sure there were cliffs like this on the East Coast until you got pretty far north. Where the hell had they taken me? And how did we get here so fast?

  Jackson took my hand and helped me off the bike. He led me toward the edge of the cliff.

  “There’s no fire,” I said.

  A black guy with long, thick dreadlocks walked up beside us. Without a word, he thrust his palm upward, creating a large flame that seemed to consume his entire hand. He looked around, located a few pieces of dead wood, then brought them all to us with nothing but a flick of his wrist. The logs stacked up on the ground in front of us. He took the fire in his hand and threw it down toward the pile.

  The logs caught fire instantly.

  I stepped back, the heat shocking against my cold skin.

  “Here,” Jackson said, pulling up a large piece of driftwood. “Sit down in front of the fire. Shifting like that can be really disorienting for a human. And it gets really cold the higher up you go in the atmosphere.”

  “How high were we flying?” I asked.

  Jackson and the black guy exchanged looks. “Higher than an airplane,” Jackson said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

  I sat down, my jaw trembling from cold.

  The black guy sat next to me, criss-cross on the dirt. I stared at him and he nodded up at me.

  “I’m Harper,” I said.

  “Mordecai,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

  I smiled. At least this guy seemed normal. For a shadow demon.

  I held my hands out toward the fire to warm them. They were numb from cold. My heart slowed down to a normal beat, and the events of the night started to sink in. I attacked Mrs. Ashworth. The Order was coming for me and Jackson now. We were fugitives.

  What were they going to do to us once they did find us?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  And how did we end up on the run with a gang of shadow demons? I hadn’t even known there were others like Jackson here in our world. Demons who weren’t bound to witches. I had a million questions I needed to ask him.

  When I turned to find him, though, he was by that girl again. Lea. I studied her in the firelight. She was undeniably beautiful. She was young like me, but I had a feeling she was also old like Jackson.

 
I watched them argue. She placed a hand on his arm in a move that had such tenderness and affection, it seemed out of character. I expected Jackson to pull away, but he didn’t. He just stared at her. I swallowed hard.

  They obviously shared a past. And after tonight, I was sure that any hope I had of a future with him was slipping through my fingers like sand.

  Or shadow.

  Extreme Measures

  “I’m Erick.” A short guy with spiky hair and a California surfer dude accent came close to the fire and introduced himself to me. “You already met Mordecai and Cristo and Lea, of course.”

  I looked around the small camp. There was one more member of their group I still hadn’t met. A skinny Asian guy with glasses and a boxy hair cut stood off to the side, staring out at the ocean.

  “That’s Joost,” Mordecai said, following my gaze. “He doesn’t talk much.”

  “Where are we?” I asked. If Jackson didn’t have any answers for me, maybe these guys could tell me what the hell was going on.

  “Oregon,” Erick said. “About as far from your little town as we could get without leaving the country.”

  My eyes widened. Oregon? We must have been going a lot faster than I ever could have imagined.

  I rested my elbows on my knees and propped my head up, staring at the fire. “Thanks for coming for us,” I said softly.

  Mordecai smiled at me. “Sure thing,” he said, then laughed. “Although I might have liked to watch you fight the Order of Shadows. Something tells me a little thing like you might actually be able to screw some shit up when it comes to those witches.”

  I shook my head. Fight the Order? No thank you. I had nowhere near the skill and training most of those women had.

  “Don’t look so worried, mate,” Cristo said, coming to sit by the fire with us. He had a beer bottle in his hand and he tipped it up, the liquid flowing into his mouth until the bottle was completely empty.

  The three guys started talking about some party they crashed the weekend before. I zoned out, lost in my questions and trying to figure out how exactly we were going to get out of this mess.

  I have no idea how much time passed before Jackson and Lea joined the group at the fire. Jackson sat next to me on the driftwood, and the touch of his knee against mine made me feel almost sane again.

  “Thanks again for helping us get out of there,” Jackson said.

  “No worries,” Mordecai said.

  “The hardest part was riding away without getting rid of any of those witches,” Erick said. “I mean, a whole tent full of them. We could have brought some serious pain.”

  Everyone around the fire laughed. Cristo tossed his bottle at Erick and rolled his eyes.

  I tensed. Was he talking about killing witches? I looked to Jackson, hoping he would have some answers. He reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. The subtle shake of his head told me to keep my mouth shut, no matter what the group had to say.

  “We still could,” Lea said. She stood with one foot propped up on a large rock. She was staring at me across the flames. “We could end the Peachville coven right now if we wanted to.”

  I started to stand up, but Jackson put his hand on my leg. I stared at him. Was he seriously expecting me to just sit here while this girl threatened to kill me?

  “She’s joking, Harper,” he said. He turned to Lea. “Harper’s been through a lot tonight, can’t you just give her a break?”

  She narrowed her eyes, her gaze still firmly on me. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Come on, Lea,” Mordecai said. “Let up.”

  “What do we do from here?” Cristo said. “Are we just going to hide out here for a spell? Won’t the Order send someone after her?”

  “Well, we can’t take her with us on our planned mission next week, that’s for sure,” Erick said.

  “I’m cool with taking a break, to be honest,” Mordecai said. “It’s been a long time since we took a week to just chill.”

  Lea stomped her foot down on the ground. “We didn’t come to this world to chill,” she said. “This isn’t a vacation, in case you’ve forgotten. These human witches have stolen thousands of our brothers and sisters, making slaves out of our loved ones. And for what?” She looked straight at me, her mouth twisted in a gruesome snarl. “For their own selfish power.”

  I had to practically bite my tongue off to keep from giving her a piece of my mind. She was treating me as if I had purposely chosen this life. As if I were somehow responsible for the Order’s actions.

  An uncomfortable tension hung between us. Cristo grabbed another beer from a cooler on the side of his bike while everyone else just stared at the fire. Joost had finally come over to the fire, but he sat behind the rest of the group without a word.

  “We’ve kept out of your business in Peachville,” Lea said to Jackson. “Out of respect for you and your family. It hasn’t been much of an issue since their power was diminished. Without a Prima, those witches were nothing to us. But you know as well as I do what they’re going to do now. We can’t just sit by and let that happen.”

  Jackson ran a hand through his hair, then leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

  “What is she talking about?” I said, not able to keep my mouth shut for long. “What are they going to do?”

  Jackson shook his head and looked up at Lea. “You had to bring that up now?” he said. He turned his body toward me, his shoulders tense. His eyes dark. “After what happened tonight, they’ll consider you dangerous. It won’t take much for Lydia Ashworth to convince the rest of the council that extreme measures need to be taken.”

  I sat up straight and tried not to show fear. “What kind of extreme measures?”

  “They’ll either wipe your memory and initiate you early,” Jackson said. “Or if they have the crow’s spell books, they’ll kill you and use your blood to initiate a new Prima. My guess is that Mrs. Ashworth will be quick to want the job.”

  “They have the books,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Jackson asked.

  “Because the earring I found down there in the library belongs to Brooke,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure the only way they were all able to get down there was because Mrs. Ashworth pledged a blood oath to the crow’s coven a long time ago. I think Brooke’s family and Mrs. Ashworth’s family have all been working together.”

  No wonder Brooke was suddenly dating Drake. They’d obviously made some kind of alliance.

  “Either way, Peachville is going to have a new Prima,” Lea said. “And that means restored power.”

  I took a deep breath and stared at the orange flames. In both of those scenarios, the real me died.

  “What about you?” I asked Jackson. “What will they do to you?”

  “Now that they know I have my old powers back, they’ll try to bind me again. And this time they’ll recruit help.”

  “Help?”

  “The High Council,” he said.

  I shook my head. We were totally screwed. How could we fight against that?

  “So what now?” I said. “We run?”

  “From the Order of Shadows?” Erick said. “Not for long. They’ll find you eventually. Best you come up with a good plan now so that you meet them on your own terms.”

  “The Order has people everywhere,” Cristo said. “And access to magic more powerful than you could ever imagine. It’s only a matter of time before they find you.”

  “Well, we can’t just give up,” I said.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” Lea said. “There is no ‘we’. It’s you on your own, girlie. If Jackson wants to tie is fate to you, that’s his business, but don’t include us in your future plans. We’ll help you hide out, but only because Jackson and me, we share a past. I owe him my life. But you? I don’t owe you anything.”

  “Give the girl a break, Lea,” Mordecai said. “Look at her, she’s terrified.”

  I stopped wringing my hands together and lifted my chin in the air. I was sc
ared, sure. But I didn’t want to look weak.

  “Maybe we should just leave this until morning,” Joost said. His voice was quiet, but everyone listened and nodded. I met his eyes for a moment, but he quickly looked back down at the ground.

  “Fine,” Lea said. “Cristo, conjure up some tents. Mordecai, put out that fire so the whole world doesn’t know where we are.”

  The group dispersed, everyone busy with getting the camp ready for sleep. I sat on the driftwood log, my legs trembling too hard for me to trust them.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  Beside me, Jackson wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him, my body and mind completely exhausted.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  That was the understatement of the year.

  “Yes we do,” I said. “And this time, no secrets.”

  Losing You Forever

  “I know a path to the beach,” Jackson said.

  We stood together while the others conjured tents and cast spells around the perimeter in order to warn us if anyone approached. The grass under my feet shriveled up as Mordecai cast a spell near us. I stared at the ground and remembered the night we were attacked in the woods. The grass and trees around us all withered the same way.

  “You’ve been here before?” I asked, stepping carefully as we reached a rocky path that led sharply down the side of the cliff.

  “Many times,” he said. “It’s one of Lea’s favorite places.”

  A sting of jealousy pierced my stomach. What exactly was his relationship to her? I wondered just how close they were. She’d said she owed him her life.

  “It’s a good hiding spot, far from any city and so far up, it’s hard to get to with a regular car,” he said. “But we won’t be able to stay here long.”

  We didn’t talk the rest of the way down to the beach. I had to squint to see where I was placing my feet as we walked. The moon was nice and bright, but other than that, there were no other lights out here.