Through the Shadows

by Gloria Teague

  Through the Shadows

  a paranormal romance

  Gloria Teague

  Diva

  Denton, Texas

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Diva

  An imprint of AWOC.COM Publishing

  P.O. Box 2819

  Denton, TX 76202

  ©2012 by Gloria Teague

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-62016-004-6

  Visit the author’s website: http://www.gloriateague.com

  Chapter One

  “It’d be easier to make money as a stripper in a smoke-filled, bug infested bar. Too bad I threw out all my fishnet hose. Too bad I don’t have the body for it. Too bad I can’t dance.” Tori sighed, glanced over the last sentence written, and let her fingers fly across the keyboard.

  He pulled Helene close, then closer still. Burying his nose in the luxuriant, flaxen curls clinging damply to her neck, Avery gently nibbled his way to the hollow of her throat and felt his lover’s pulse quicken against his lips.

  Helene’s breathing grew rapid and shallow, her chest rose more with each breath as her passion grew. Her slender fingers drew his head closer to her. As he began to slowly, so slowly, kiss the hollow at her throat, she stroked the coarse, thick mat on his chest.

  Helene enjoyed the way the moonlight had cast glints of silver within his jet black hair and ran her fingers through the soft tresses. She moved her hands across his back; the fingernails pressed just hard enough to leave a trail of tingles down his spine.

  Avery pulled her to him, crushing her breasts against his hard chest, eliciting a moan through her parted lips. Her head fell back and her eyes were glazed in wanton desire.

  Avery’s own passion grew stronger by the second as he pulled the plunging neckline of her dress to her waist. Avery’s breath caught at her perfection and leaned down to…

  “No, no, no! What’s wrong with you, you idiot? When did you start writing bodice rippers?” Talking to herself sometimes helped pull her thoughts into focus. “That’s too forceful for Avery! He would never rip a lady’s gown, even if she invited him to. C’mon Tori, you can write better than this crap!”

  She shook her head at the character’s lack of finesse, and then realized it was her own lack of style. Tori was disappointed in herself for writing such a thing.

  The corners of her lips were turned down in concentration, trying to correct this terrible wrong she had done her protagonist. She hated to go back and rewrite the whole chapter but she saw no way around it. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth to chew on it thoughtfully. What to do, what to do?

  She felt a soft kiss of frosty air drift across the back of her neck with a feather-like touch and a chill skittered down her spine. Nerve-endings were screaming a warning to the brain and her throat became arid. Tori stared at the computer screen, straining her peripheral vision to see who stood behind her. Whoever it was stood close enough that she could feel the heaviness of the air being occupied by his mass.

  Did I leave the door open? Oh man, I didn’t bother to set the alarm. Glancing over the surface of her deck, Tori saw she had nothing to use as a weapon. Quickly, she envisioned the layout of the room, the house, trying to quell her pounding heart enough to plan a route of escape.

  I can plant my feet on the floor and forcefully shove my chair straight back, right into whoever it is. The weight of my body should be enough to at least knock him down. Him. Why am I thinking it’s a HIM? Because, O God, a murderer would be a big strong man! But, maybe, with the element of surprise… O God, O God, O God! Okay, now just stop it! Just take a deep breath and do it before it’s too late. DO IT NOW!

  Feet firmly planted, Tori leaned forward in her chair, then slammed her body against the back of the chair while shoving off with her feet. She held her breath, waiting for the collision and the terror of what would happen next.

  Her chair tipped over, her legs flung outward like a wishbone, her hands scrabbled at empty air, trying to find purchase, and she cracked her head on the doorknob of the closet where she kept her writing supplies. Even through the swirling, bright stars dancing in front of her eyes, she could see there was no one there.

  Well Tori, you’ve finally lost it! Mom always said if you keep writing “this stuff” you’ll lose your mind. Mom’s gonna be so happy that she was right.

  She pulled herself off the floor, righted her chair, and rubbed the back of her head to feel the small knot already forming. She sat down straighter in her chair, turning her head to work the kinks from her neck and shoulders. The joints creaked and groaned like protesting hinges of a long-locked door being opened. Getting lost in your writing was a sure bet for muscle soreness. And throwing yourself against a wooden door was another. Perhaps a healthy imagination isn’t so healthy, after all.

  Get away from the computer, at least for a few minutes. Stretch out, get a cup of coffee, think about something other than this damned book for a few minutes. It’s no wonder Jim left! How could he cope with an absentee wife living in Fantasy Land? I seem to forget there is another world, the real world, out there. It’s just so much easier to be in the company of people that I have created. I know what they’re thinking, and how they’re feeling, every minute. I determine what my characters do for a living, who they marry, and how many children they have. I even make the decision if they live or die. It’s a tough act for real people to follow. Even close friends pale by comparison to fictional characters, and it doesn’t take them too long to figure that out.

  Tori Stanfield—Writer Extraordinaire! No husband, no children, no friends, only a mother and an agent who refuse to give up on me. Thank God for families!

  Tori decided against putting on the kettle she used for making decaffeinated coffee. This was going to be a long and hopefully productive night; she needed all the caffeine she could get. She heard a low, grumbling sound as she measured the coffee. She grinned when she realized it was her stomach, complaining because she had forgotten to eat-again.

  It never ceases to amaze me how I can forget the most mundane but important things, like eating. I know that’s bad, but it does keep me in a size three! But a size three is kinda skinny stretched out on a five-five frame, I suppose. I guess I better grab a sandwich before my gut starts talking to me.

  The emptiness of the house suddenly seemed oppressive. As she stood in the kitchen trying to convince herself to eat, Tori felt the silence weighing down upon her. Slapping together ham-and-cheese on rye and calling it good, she walked over to turn on the CD player.

  The sounds of Motown were instantly soothing as she cranked up the volume. The sixties music comforted her like an old friend. Even if she did have friends, they’d make fun of her for liking music that was older than she was. She danced around the floor, dropping breadcrumbs and singing in an enthusiastic, even if off-key, voice. The next CD of various artists was mellow and made her smile between bites.

  She stopped in mid-step and mid-note as the music died. There had been a noise like a hammer-blow and the CD stopped spinning. The lights of the equalizer no longer flickered in rhythm and the power switch light was off. Vertical lines knitted themselves between her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

  Tori stomped across the floor, flippe
d her long red hair over her shoulder and glared at the stereo with green eyes squinted. She repeatedly punched the power button and when she received no positive reaction to her technological probing, she gave the wooden case a swift kick.

  “Well, isn’t that just great? Isn’t it absolutely wonderful? Stupid, stupid stereo! I can’t afford to have it fixed. Not now. But someday… Someday I’m gonna be rich and famous, and I’ll just throw away anything that doesn’t work. Right! I won’t even bother to have it repaired. Yeah, sure! And when I’m rich and famous I can also afford therapy for talking to myself!”

  Shrugging, Tori took her coffee and half-eaten sandwich back to work with her. Some people would have called this room an office, or a study, but she called it simply “the room of dreams.”

  Tori loved her old house that had been built in the early fifties. With over two thousand square feet it was much too big for her, but she didn’t mind. When she and Jim had bought the house, it had been with the idea of having children to fill the rooms. The house sat in the middle of a huge parcel of farmland, complete with wooden fences. There were even a few water troughs left from the previous owner.

  There were several rooms that she never used. The house had two living areas, four bedrooms, and two baths. She used one bedroom, leaving two spare rooms in case she ever had any company. The smallest one she had converted into a writing room. It held her computer, a large desk, and several bookcases filled with research books.

  It had been fun finding information about the different eras of history and she had managed to assemble quite an assortment of reference books. In the early years, she had found that most people scoffed at the idea of romantic fantasy. At that time, not only did these people not believe in any such thing, they refused to buy books about it, either, which was too bad for her because that was what her novels were all about. True, they were all fiction, but she thought they were good, solid pieces of work. Now that the historical romance genre was taking off, Tori was selling more books, just not enough to repair an out-dated stereo. One day she’d hit it big, she just knew it. Until that day she would keep plodding along, selling as many copies as die-hard romantics would buy.

  Tori was rational enough to realize she lived her romantic fantasies through her writing. Her lonely life was made more bearable by creating her dream man, her one true love. He was the leading character in the series of books she had written.

  His name was Avery Norcross and he was everything Tori dreamed of in a man. She knew that no mere mortal could possibly live up to the high standards she had created for him.

  As she stared into her fantasy world that Avery inhabited, she could see his heart-stopping visage in her mind’s eye: His long, thick mane of jet-black hair blowing in the wind, tugging to be free of the leather strip that held it. He was stopped at the top of a grassy knoll, astride the sweating, massive body of his chestnut mount, Mankala. The steed was prancing from one hoof to another, snorting in annoyance at being held at bay.

  Avery’s strong chin was lifted; his eyes, an icy aquamarine of the open sea, scanning the countryside for anyone foolish enough to trespass the grounds of the Norcross land. The moonlight cascaded over his strong, broad shoulders and flat belly. Tori imagined the muscles of Avery’s thighs tensing against the movement of the horse. She held her breath, almost as if in anticipation of a loving caress from this beautiful, fictional, man.

  As she sat with her chin in her hand, the computer screen-saver kicked in and moved across her face in kaleidoscopic colors. Gazing into the face of a man that she longed for with every part of her being, she jumped from her chair as The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” rocked back into existence.

  Oh, very appropriate!

  The usually smooth, laid-back sounds that reminisced the days of flower power and free love crashed over her in a cacophony of blistering noise. Tori slapped her hands over her ears as she ran to the stereo to turn down the ear-splitting volume. Just as her fingers touched the control, the whole system shut itself down again.

  “You lousy piece of junk! Scare me half to death! I could’ve had a heart attack, you crummy, no-good…”

  Muttering to herself, Tori reached for the electrical cord. She viciously jerked on the cord, pulling the entire outlet from the wall.

  “There! That’ll do it! Now let’s see if you can blast my blood pressure into stroke range again.”

  Tori walked back to the computer, dusting her hands off as she settled back into her chair and stared into space. After a few minutes, she decided the caffeine wasn’t working and neither was her brain, so she might as well go to bed.

  She was mourning the loss of the stereo as she brushed her teeth. For years she had left it on at night, the soft music playing background noise so she wouldn’t notice the silence. Even now, she laughed at the irony that she claimed to fear nothing—but needed a radio to chase the boogeyman away while she slept. She had tried leaving the television on at night, but the constant change in volume from program to commercials kept her awake.

  Oh well, Tori, I guess you’ll go cold turkey tonight. No smooth sounds from Al Green or soulful tunes from Smokey Robinson to keep you company.

  She turned down the duvet on her double bed that tonight seemed mammoth and slid between the cool, crisp sheets. Staring into the imageless void, Tori realized this was the first time she had noticed how truly dark it was in her room. Disgusted, she got out of bed to turn on the bathroom light but forced herself to show some maturity and close the door partway.

  I may need to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I don’t want to bump into anything in the dark.

  The bed wasn’t as comforting as it had been a few minutes before. The pillow now had canyon-sized craters, no matter how much she tried to fluff it out. The mattress developed boulder-sized lumps and the sheets were trying to grasp her legs in a stranglehold.

  The house picked this time to act up, too. Every wooden beam began to creak like an old-man’s joints. The windowpanes rattled like dry bones in their frames. From the bathroom there was the roaring, monotonous drip of a water faucet.

  Gawd! This is ridiculous! I may as well admit defeat and turn on the television. I’m not going to be able to go to sleep in all this noisy silence!

  Sneering at her own cowardice, Tori stalked into the living room to turn on the television. She thought the best choice would be a music channel but all the local cable company offered was a country music station.

  “Oh well, it’s better than nothing. Yee haw! Ride ’em cowboy!”

  As she was leaving the room, she stopped just long enough to switch on one of the lamps beside the couch.

  Chicken!

  Tori walked into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and saw the indicator light was bright on the coffee maker, telling her she had forgotten to turn it off. She poured herself a cup and decided it wasn’t too strong, even after sitting there for two hours.

  Only two hours? Strange, it seems much longer than that. I guess it’s a good a thing ironing clothes is against my religion. I’d probably leave the iron on, too, and burn the house down around my head!

  She carried her cup into the living room, debating if she wanted to force herself to work on her book or lose herself in some meaningless, late-night television program. She knew that she didn’t do her best writing if she wasn’t in the mood, so she opted for the TV.

  While channel surfing, she found one her favorite movies was on. She leaned back in her recliner, sipped her coffee, and became enmeshed in the story. She had always enjoyed the movie, not only for its knighted men, but also for their undying love for their ladies. Tori had often wished she had a man to love her like that. He would battle for her, give his life for her, but not before he loved her completely and thoroughly. But Tori knew that even if she were ready for love again, her own imaginative mind would keep most men far away. She had her own painful past to draw from to reach that conclusion.

  * * *

 
Tori had wanted to be a writer since she was twelve years old. She began writing short stories about anything and everything. She could hear a song title or a particularly picturesque phrase, and just sit still, allowing her imagination free reign. She could travel the span of this world and imagined others in her mind. Different scenarios would jockey and shift into position, only to be replaced by a bigger, better idea. Within minutes, a full-fledged story took up residence and she would begin frantically writing before she lost the idea.

  Words had always been her best friends, her own creativity drawing her into its lonely, alluring grip. When her mind was filled with words begging to be written, there weren’t enough hours in the day to keep up, and friends fell by the wayside.

  One of the few exceptions to this rule was Jim Stanfield, a young man she met at a coffee shop. He had seen something special deep inside the shy girl, her loving heart beneath the seemingly aloof exterior. Others had thought her standoffish, but Jim had seen the truth.

  The marriage had been serene, comforting, and Tori’s love for writing took a backseat to the love for her husband. The fact that she was not writing wasn’t a hardship; she knew that she could return to it any time she wished. She just felt it best to give herself completely to Jim, at least for a few years.

  They had bought this house, decorating it with playful enthusiasm. Just picking out the wallpaper had been an adventure for the two lovebirds. They took their time remodeling, even decorating a room for the nursery with confidant love.

  Tori had never used birth control; she and Jim both wanted a baby as soon as possible. Each month was a disappointment that was tempered with hope that the next month would be a joyful victory. In the beginning, they explained it away by saying they were trying too hard, she hadn’t been ovulating at the right time, or they were too tensed-up about the situation.

  As the months turned into years, the disappointment turned to anger and they both became bitter. They began quarreling about unimportant things, like what to have for dinner. Soon the arguments turned ugly. Jim blamed her for not becoming pregnant and Tori blamed him for not being fertile enough to get her pregnant.