Born in the Shadows (In the Shadows Series Book 1)

by Courtney McPhail

  “There was nothing the hospital could do for you.”

  “And how do you know that? Are you a doctor or something?”

  Maybe Mary was her doctor in the real world. She had read about coma patients picking up details from the world around them in the hospital.

  “No but Anne is,” Mary said. “It doesn’t matter though. There was nothing a human hospital could do for you.”

  “Human hospital?”

  “Look, to be honest with you, I’ve never done this before. Nicky went to handle some things and he thought he would be back before you woke up but he’s still MIA. It would be much better for you to wait for him but I get the feeling that you won’t want to wait.”

  Cordelia shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. Mary sighed and uncrossed her legs, rubbing her palms over her pants, her nerves obviously getting the best of her.

  “You’ll have to bear with me; there isn’t exactly a script for this situation. I just hope I don’t screw it up,” Mary said, before taking a moment to collect her thoughts. “Okay, do you remember when you were attacked?”

  “Yeah I remember. Sampson pushed me, I got shishkabobed and then he left me there.”

  “Do you remember seeing someone else? A boy, looked about sixteen with gold eyes and light brown hair?”

  Cordelia thought back to the attack and the aftermath. She remembered the stars coming out in the sky and then the face hovering over her with the gold eyes. She had thought it was Death coming to take her.

  “I do.”

  “That was Nicky.”

  Wait, didn’t she just say he was sixteen?

  “Nicky, as in your father?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Nicky, your father, is sixteen years old?”

  Mary nodded again.

  “Christ, my subconscious is screwed up.”

  “I’m sorry?” Mary said, confused.

  “It’s just that inventing a teenage father with a daughter in her twenties, that is beyond weird. That has to be some sort of psychological problem. Like the opposite of Oedipal Complex or something. If I get out of this coma, I’m so seeing a therapist.”

  “Coma?” Mary repeated her voice bewildered.

  “Yeah, you don’t have to keep up the act; I know that I’m in a coma. So since I figured it all out, can you just tell me what the epiphany is that I’m supposed to have so I can wake up?”

  Mary blinked a few times before understanding seemed to dawn on her and then her face became sympathetic. “Cordelia, you aren’t in a coma. You are very much awake.”

  “Nice try but like I told you, I remember the attack. You don’t just walk away from something like that. Since there aren’t any angels with harps or little devils with pitchforks, a coma is the only other possible way this is happening.”

  “There is another way.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You been changed into a Shadow Walker.”

  Cordelia paused at that. Definitely not the answer she was expecting. She didn’t even know if that was an actual answer to her question. “A what?”

  “A Shadow Walker. The name you might be more familiar with is vampire.”

  Cordelia reconsidered her initial assessment of Mary. She no longer intimidated her because it was clear she was completely out of her mind.

  “You expect me to believe I’m a vampire?”

  “Yes. When Nicky found you, he knew you were dying. He didn’t want that to happen and the only way to save you was to change you into one of us.”

  “Us? You and me, we’re both vampires,” Cordelia said incredulously before shaking her head in amusement. “Well that’s different but I suppose if you had to choose your own coma adventure, being a vampire isn’t too bad. Way better than being a zombie or werewolf.”

  “Cordelia, I am serious. You are not in a coma. This is the real world.”

  “Oh I get it. You want me to believe that this is real so I stay in my coma. You are like the manifestation of my injuries or something. Well I’m not going to fall for it.”

  She headed towards the door but Mary was there in an instant, blocking the doorway. Cordelia jumped back in shock. Definitely a coma. There was no way that even an Olympic sprinter could move that fast.

  “Cordelia, I know that this is hard to understand and I’m probably screwing this up but you have to listen to me. This is not a coma or a dream or a fantasy. This is all real, you need to believe me.”

  “Prove it then.”

  Mary tilted her head to the side, as if she was trying to size Cordelia up. She barely registered Mary’s hand lashing out before her head snapped back and her cheek began to sting.

  Cordelia’s own hand raised to touch her warmed flesh. “You slapped me!”

  Mary just shrugged. “You told me to prove it to you. You can only feel pain in the real world.”

  Cordelia rubbed her burning cheek. “You could have just pinched me!”

  “I figured I’d do a pre-emptive strike in case you were going to get hysterical.”

  Cordelia smiled in spite of herself. It was weird. Despite her having just gone all Joan Collins on her, her gut told her that Mary meant her no real harm. She was also starting to kind of like Mary. Even with the vampire delusions and the painful slapping.

  Speaking of which, what the hell? Clearly, something really weird was going on if she was feeling pain and damned if she knew what it was. If this was the real world then she needed to understand what was happening. If it was all the product of a coma, she needed to go wherever her subconscious led her. She certainly wasn’t going to get any answers by arguing with Mary.

  “Okay, so I’m a vampire now--”

  “Shadow Walker,” Mary interrupted. “The V-word doesn’t always play so well around our kind. Something about human popular culture poisoning our image.”

  “Sorry, Shadow Walker. Now, you said that Nicky found me and he changed me into a Shadow Walker. How exactly did he do that?”

  “He had to drink your blood and then he cut himself and fed the blood back to you.”

  “Well, that’s just gross,” Cordelia said, wrinkling her nose in disgust and Mary laughed.

  “Maybe but it is the only way to bring you back from the dead. Once you had your own blood mixed with his blood in your body, it brought about the change.”

  “Tell me about the change.”

  “As Anne explains it, when Shadow Walker blood is mixed with human blood, it begins to mutate the human cells. It takes a full cycle of the moon before it is complete but during that time, the blood heals your body of all the damage done to it while you were human. It also rewires your brain to heighten your senses and your emotional receptors. Then there is the increased strength, speed and endurance. Oh and of course the fangs.”

  Cordelia let it all swirl around her brain, sorting it out as best she could. She supposed it made sense from a technical standpoint. “So I’m a Shadow Walker because I have mutant blood cells now.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, trying to think about why she felt that way. “I guess I just thought that it would involve magic or something. It all sounds very scientific.”

  “Just because science can explain it doesn’t mean it still isn’t magical.”

  “That’s very deep,” Cordelia commented dryly.

  Mary laughed and Cordelia smiled. It felt good to make this elegant woman laugh. It made her feel like she was being accepted, something she rarely felt in her life. Her mother’s abuse had convinced her that other women were always judging her and finding her wanting. She could feel a lump growing in her throat and she swallowed repeatedly to try to clear it.

  God was her brain completely fried? She shouldn’t get choked up at the idea of this stranger laughing at some lame joke she made. What the hell was wrong with her?

  “So what else does being a Shadow Walker mean?” she asked as a way to distract herself from her emotional rollercoaster.
>
  “You will not age and unless you are decapitated, consumed by fire or your heart is destroyed, you will not die.”

  “Wooden stakes don’t make you go poof?”

  “Oh no, those can do us in but not because they are made of wood. A stake, a sword, even a shotgun blast at point blank range, it doesn’t really matter. All of them can do enough damage that the blood can’t heal the heart fast enough.”

  “I’ll remember to avoid those. Is there anything else that can kill me?”

  “Sunlight will burn you and if you are exposed too long, you will emolliate.”

  She glanced at the windows. “That explains the heavy drapes. What about the whole cross and holy water thing?”

  “Just a myth. We aren’t demons so religious iconography won’t affect us.”

  “Do I still have a reflection?”

  “Yes, good thing too. We get to see how different we look after the change.”

  “I look different?”

  Mary nodded her head in the direction of the bathroom. “See for yourself.”

  Cordelia’s stomach flip-flopped as she headed to the bathroom. She had never been very fond of her plain Jane self, what had becoming a Shadow Walker done to her? Sure, Mary was gorgeous but she had probably been perfect to begin with. Cordelia was all lumps and bumps and frizz. Plus she had been pasty white as a human, she probably looked see-through as a Shadow Walker.

  When she stood before the large mirror in the opulent bathroom, she was shocked at what she saw there. The no reflection theory was definitely a myth but the face that stared back at her was foreign yet familiar. The last time she checked, her hair had been a dull orange that was inconveniently in that middle space between curly and wavy. Now it looked like spun copper and fell across her shoulders in large curls. She ran a hand cautiously over the curls, not quite believing that they were hers. Oh yeah, they were definitely hers and they were silky soft.

  She smiled at her reflection and saw that her canines were now sharp points. She reached up and poked at them with her finger, wincing as the needle sharp tip pierced her skin. She put the wounded digit in her mouth on instinct and the taste of her own blood bloomed on her tongue. She felt a shifting in her gums and she watched mesmerized as her teeth lengthened, the tips poking from beneath her lips.

  She continued her assessment of her reflection, noticing the change in her eyes. They were still blue but now they shone with an iridescent light that made her irises seem like they were rings of blue diamond. Her freckles had faded away and the pimple that she had discovered that morning was gone. She raised a hand to stroke her cheeks and the skin was baby smooth. All the imperfections that she had always seen were erased, as if she had been given back the skin she had been born with.

  “Like I said, the change heals the entire breakdown your body has gone through during your human life.”

  She glanced over to see Mary leaning against the doorjamb. “The superficial things like scars and freckles heal during the first twenty four hours. Any damage to your heart and lungs from bad eating or smoking will be repaired over the next month. The only imperfection left will be your clan mark.”

  Mary raised her hand to her neck and traced her fingertips over a pink scar there. Cordelia glanced to the mirror and spotted the same mark on her own neck.

  “The mark is used by our kind to identify which clan we belong to,” Mary said.

  “What do you mean by clan? Like a family?”

  “In a way, yes we are a family. There are twelve clans within the Shadow Walker race, each one descended from one of the Old Ones. They were the beings that created the first Shadow Walkers.”

  She knew she should probably ask Mary to expand on that whole creation of Shadow Walkers thing but she couldn’t keep her eyes off her reflection. It was as if she was hypnotized by her own face, a sweet calm coming over her as she gazed at herself. It was strange, for most of her life, she had avoided mirrors, always disappointed in what she saw there but now she couldn’t tear herself away from her reflected image.

  “Why do I look so different?” The words came out unbidden, whispered in wonderment.

  “The ethereal beauty thing is a trait of our race. Anne thinks it is part of making us efficient predators. We can make ourselves appear incredibly attractive to humans and lure them to us. You are new so you’ve got the dial up to eleven, even a blind human would be drawn to you. Eventually you’ll learn to control it and use it to your advantage when hunting for a human to feed on.”

  The way Mary talked about humans sent a shiver of trepidation running through her. “Does this mean I’m evil? That I don’t have a soul?”

  “No, not at all,” Mary said with a wince, standing straight up and trying to reassure her. “Sorry, the predator part probably sounded horrible. Anne just tends to talk like a scientist with her whole top of the food chain/survival of the fittest crap and I guess it’s rubbed off on me. Like I said, we aren’t demons, we still have our souls. Our kind is capable of both good and evil, just like it was when we were human.”

  “So I’m not the walking dead?”

  “Well, technically, you did die. Your heart stopped beating, your blood stopped flowing so for all intents and purposes, you were dead. But once Nicky fed you the blood, you were brought back to life. The blood started your heart and it is what keeps it beating now.”

  So she had died but she wasn’t dead anymore. She had a soul, a beating heart and a reflection but also supernatural eyes, clear skin and a new set of fangs.

  “All of this is very confusing,” she replied, reaching up rub her temples where she could feel the beginning of a headache brewing.

  Mary smiled at her sympathetically. “Easiest way to deal with it is just forget everything you learned in the movies.”

  “If you guys, or I guess, us guys aren’t evil, why stay hidden from humans?”

  “Because it would harm both humans and Shadow Walkers if we didn’t. If our existence was common knowledge, humans would know that our blood can bring them back to life. Despite our higher thought processes, Shadow Walkers and humans are animals at heart. Our survival instinct overrides our morals and emotions. Humans would want to use our kind to keep themselves alive and we would want to fight them off. It would be carnage for both sides and in the end we would destroy both races.”

  Cordelia could see the logic in that. Throughout history, humans had exploited and destroyed each other. They would surely do the same to the Shadow Walkers if they had the opportunity.

  Now was probably not the best time to be getting philosophical. She had to focus on herself and her immediate problems, like what the hell she was supposed to do now that she was a Shadow Walker.

  “So what happens now?”

  “Why don’t you get dressed and come downstairs to meet everyone else first,” Mary said before moving back into the bedroom and Cordelia followed. “We can talk about the rest later.”

  Mary went to the armoire and opened one of the drawers, pulling out a pair of sweatpants. “I know they aren’t high fashion but we aren’t very formal around here.”

  “Better than being pants less,” Cordelia quipped before pulling on the sweatpants.

  Mary led them out into a long hallway with dark wood paneling and plush green carpet. There were small tables with vases full of fresh flowers and water color paintings placed between the doors that lined the hallway. She counted at least six doors and she wondered how many rooms there were in this house.

  “How big is this place?”

  “Pretty big. There are two wings here on the second floor with twelve bedrooms. The first floor is a little larger.”

  They reached a small set of steps that were covered with a plush burgundy runner that stretched down a much larger corridor. As they walked down the steps, Cordelia realized that the corridor was really a gallery that looked out over a grand staircase that curved its way down to the main floor.

  Holy crap, this wasn’t a house, this was a freakin
g palace.

  She stopped and leaned over the wooden banister, gazing down at the large front hall. At least she figured it was the front hall, judging by the gigantic set of double doors directly across from the staircase. The doors were surrounded by a large entryway made of black marble with veins of silver running through it. Three marble steps led the way down to the dark wood floor that was polished to a bright shine. Various doorways and open arches lined the walls of the hall with large oil paintings hanging between them and damask lounges beneath the art.

  Mary continued to the main staircase and Cordelia reluctantly followed, craning her neck to stare up at the crystal chandeliers that were suspended from the ceiling. She finally tore her gaze away from the decor to focus on the stairs, afraid of tripping like some gawking goon and embarrassing herself further with a tumble down the sweeping staircase.

  When they reached the main floor, Mary led her to an open door where Cordelia could hear the sound of a television coming from the room. She followed Mary inside, and though she didn’t know what to expect exactly, she never would have guessed it would be the scene in front of her.

  She saw four people sprawled about on the overstuffed leather sofas in front of a large plasma screen, which was currently showing an episode of Seinfeld. Mary cleared her throat and everyone turned to focus on them. Cordelia offered a half hearted wave and tried her best to smile as they all stared at her.

  “Cordelia, this is Demetri, third son of Zopyros and Anne, second daughter of Zopyros,” Mary said as the others stood up from the sofa. “That’s how we introduce each other in this world. It identifies your clan and how many generations you are away from the Old One.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Cordelia.” Demetri said, reaching out to shake her hand. “Glad to see you up and about.”

  He had a curly mop of dark brown hair and large eyes the color of caramel, the features working together to remind her of a puppy dog. He had a goatee that could not mask the fullness of his lips or his strong chin. He was a large man, not just because he had to be well over six foot five but he must lift some serious weights. His shoulders were broad and his biceps were nearly as thick as her legs. She could tell by the cut that his jeans were meant to be baggy but his bulging leg muscles caused the denim to stretch tight. His giant size was at odds with his t-shirt picturing a cartoon dinosaur and the words Never Forget above it and the dopey grin he wore.