But as I watched the backside of the last shifter running out the backdoor, it was hard not to wonder if I should be exempt. How did you captain a ship if you didn’t remember sailing it? Because as much as everyone told me I was this kick-ass Shadow Walker, and I had all sorts of magic stored inside my head, I didn’t remember a damn bit of it.
I got out of the booth, debating if I was the captain, about to go down with the ship, or a passenger about to scurry to the last lifeboat. Jerry and Leon were staring at me. Butch was crossing the floor, staring at me as well. I might not remember everything that had happened, but I felt a sort of ownership of these crawlers, considering they’d followed me around most of my life. And that wasn’t all. Finding out that maybe I wasn’t the monster I feared made me want to grab the wheel and prove it. Fuck. Guess I was the captain.
Although first mate seemed like a good option too, especially when I might steer us right into some craggy rocks. “Where’s Kane?” If I could find him, he’d ease right into the captain seat. Kane was a natural take-charge person. People like him were great to have around on sinking ships.
“He said he wouldn’t be back until later,” Butch said.
“You can’t call him and maybe have him come back a little early under the circumstances?” We did have a crawler about to bang down the door.
Butch made a face that matched my sarcasm. “I just tried him. He didn’t answer.”
Jerry was on his tiptoes and angling his head, trying to see out the small peephole from five feet away. “It’s standing outside the door,” Jerry said, definitely not keeping his cool.
A loud banging echoed through the room. The four of us looked at each other, and it was clear none of us knew what to do.
Butch’s face turned white. Leon’s was a shade of green, which was more concerning, considering I’d seen how many nachos he’d eaten. When I turned to Jerry to get his status, he looked like he’d been smoking crack, as he took a step toward the door and then back again.
It showed how bad the situation was when the chick who had no memory, and was definitely unbalanced, was the one holding it together best. Or maybe that was why? I’d have to debate it later, as we had a monster about to bang down our door.
“Haven’t you people ever dealt with monsters before?” I asked.
“Not”—Butch stabbed the air in the direction of the door—“like that!”
I couldn’t help but nod. These crawlers were rough. I’d grown up on them, so I’d gotten acclimated a bit. And even then, my last memory before the gap had been of a person on the border of depression and mania.
The crawler banged again. “Let in or explode.” The voice was almost painfully deep, rasping on the ears. The words were said like a person, or monster, new to speaking.
I’d seen them blow up buildings. We’d all seen it, watched it on the news. I’d seen it in person a couple of times, and actually remembered one of the times. The crawler’s threat filled me with a level of doom that seemed to have come from a sad place in my soul.
I motioned for our group to close ranks a bit, not sure how good the crawler’s hearing was. “If it was going to blow the place up, it would’ve done it already. I still think we need to talk to it. We need to know why it’s here. Except you said they blew stuff up if I talked to them. You’ll have to talk to it.” I looked at Butch.
“Why me?” He took a step away from the group.
I wasn’t sure why I’d picked him except for gut instinct. “You have the deepest voice,” I said, hoping a little flattery would encourage him.
Jerry and Leon nodded in agreement. I could’ve said Butch had to do it because he had the sweetest demeanor and they would’ve agreed. They’d probably be laughing about it too, after this was over, if we all lived that long.
Butch eyed up the group and folded under the pressure. “Fine,” he barked, but no one complained about the delivery. He could’ve added a string of insults after it and we still would have nodded in agreement.
“Start with why it wants to come in.” I leaned forward and patted him on the arm.
“That’s good,” Leon said, stepping out of Butch’s way so he had a clear path to the door.
Jerry patted him on the back, giving him a little nudge forward. Butch shrugged Jerry away, showing how he felt about that, but trudged forward.
Butch stopped in front of the door and looked back, as if to ask, Really?
Jerry and Leon nodded, and I waved my hands, hurrying him along.
Butch stared at the closed door and yelled, “Why do you want to come in?”
As if choreographed, we all took a step away from the door as he spoke, in case the rules had changed and anyone speaking to a crawler could unleash an explosion.
“Speak only to Shadow Walker.” The words were ground out like he’d eaten sandpaper for breakfast.
I moved closer to Butch and whispered, “Ask if it’s so he can blow stuff up.”
Butch rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s a little obvious, isn’t it?”
“No.” The crawler’s voice boomed through the door. He’d obviously heard me.
“Oh fuck, did that qualify as speaking to it?” Jerry asked, another few feet away.
I shrugged as we all froze, waiting to see what would happen. I bit my lip, cringing. I thought back to all the things I remembered Kane telling me. Somewhere in that pile of information, I remembered a nugget of gold. He’d said crawlers didn’t blow up Shadow Walkers. Hadn’t blown one up in as long as he could remember. They blew up the stuff around them, but left the Shadow Walker alone. So, we were probably safe as long as I was in the building. If I stepped out, well, that might be a whole different situation.
“Shadow walker, now!” The door rattled with the force of the pounding that followed.
Or maybe he would blow the place up with me in it? I stepped to the side of the door, just in case it blew off its hinges.
Butch whispered, “What are you doing?”
I waved him off when he went to grab my arm. “Go over there,” I said, shooing him toward Leon before turning my attention back to the closed door and the crawler beyond. “Will you give me your word that if I speak to you, nothing blows up?”
Jerry rolled his eyes at me, and Leon threw his hands up, like I had to be kidding.
I gave them all my best shut the hell up look, before asking, “I’m sorry, but what were your plans?”
“Only speak,” the crawler said, no pounding this time.
“I’m coming outside. Step away from the door.”
I got up on tiptoes, waiting to see if it would oblige my request, ignoring the tiny part of me that hoped he wouldn’t. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t have to go out. Although that might not be a good outcome either.
Butch’s shoulder brushed against my left one, and I stepped back to see the three of them standing close by.
“If we let you go out there alone, Kane will not only kill that thing, he’ll kill us,” Leon said.
Good. I didn’t really want to go out there alone anyway. “Okay.”
“You’re not going to even fight us?” Butch asked.
“No.” I shrugged. “Do you have any weapons?”
Butch and Leon lifted their shirts; both had guns on their hips. Now I knew why they always wore long shirts. Jerry pointed at his ankle. I assumed a gun was there.
I looked out the peephole again. It had stepped back about ten feet. Fuck.
And then I really got to see what I was dealing with. It might’ve been one of the scariest-looking crawlers I’d ever seen. It stood somewhere between seven and eight feet tall and was built like a gorilla, alternating black fur and silver scales that reminded me of snakeskin, with muscles bulging underneath. Its eyes were a red so bright that they nearly glowed, and its large, flattened nostrils flared as it breathed. Its fangs were oversized for its mouth and hung lower than its nonexistent lower lip.
Then there was the thing that was oversized below the waist. As ugly as its face was, that was wh
ere I’d be keeping my eyes. I was not making the mistake of looking below that thing’s waist again.
I swiped my hand across my jeans so it wouldn’t be too slick to open the door. Jerry, Butch, and Leon were lined up behind me.
“We ready?” I asked, white-knuckling the knob.
“Not even close,” Butch said.
They didn’t look it, either. No one could be ready for this thing. “Then let’s go,” I said.
I pushed the door open and stepped forward, the guys spreading out to my sides.
The creature took in my entourage, pausing on each person. I knew immediately our greater numbers didn’t intimidate it. Its attention settled on me, and it bowed its upper body slightly in my direction, grunting with the motion.
Was that a greeting or something? Maybe a bow? I did the same, including a bad imitation of the grunt, just in case. Less than a second later, I heard three other grunts. I looked to my sides and saw Butch shrug. I shrugged in return. They’d obviously thought it was a good idea, too.
I opened my mouth, but it took a few seconds more before I got the words out. What if this was a trick and he was going to blow up the Underground? Stuff was blowing up anyway. At least maybe I might get some answers, and I was pretty sure the building was empty.
I held my shoulders back and acted as if I didn’t want to pee my pants. “What did you want?”
“Help.” Its voice was gruff but clear.
I heard a “Huh?” but I wasn’t sure who had said it in my stunned daze.
Help? Did it just ask for help? It must be struggling with the language. Maybe it didn’t know what “help” meant. Maybe it thought “help” meant mass death? This definitely called for some clarification. “Help with what?”
Another “Huh” came, and this time it was definitely from Jerry. I held up a hand, a silent gesture for him to shut up.
The crawler wasn’t paying them any attention. Its eyes hadn’t wavered from me since they’d landed there. “You help bring more crawlers over. We don’t burn anymore.”
More crawlers? And not the ones that only had a toe in this world, because they were everywhere. He wanted them crossed over completely. He wanted them roaming this world, where everyone would see them. The chaos that would ensue from that might be worse than the fires.
And what happened if I refused? Would it continue with the explosions? Why even ask me for help? Maybe whatever it had been doing wasn’t working anymore and it couldn’t bring more over? That didn’t mean it couldn’t still blow things up.
“I don’t know how,” I said.
It nodded. I took that to mean he’d give me a primer when the time came.
“Are you saying you don’t want to burn?” I asked, feeling a little more confident now that I knew the creature needed me. Or thought it did. I wasn’t sure I could help bring anything over at this point, let alone a crawler. Even if I could, I didn’t know how.
“How many of you are here now?” I asked, not ready to give up.
It stood silently as if I hadn’t asked it anything. This thing didn’t even blink.
I tilted my head to the side. “You’re the one that came here.”
“No.”
“Yes, you did come here,” Jerry blurted out.
“He’s not saying he didn’t come here. He’s saying he’s not answering any questions,” I told Jerry, not trusting the crawler enough to break eye contact while I spoke. “Why should we do anything for you at all?”
He stared above me and tilted his head back, and then a great burst of fire flew out of his mouth. I could feel a blast of heat as it died in smoke.
“Burn.” Sparks flew from its mouth with the word.
“So either I help or you’re going to burn more places down.” It had looked like he meant burn down this place specifically. However unlikely, I didn’t want to give him any ideas in case that had been a coincidence. “That’s not a good bargain, and I think you can’t cross anyone else over. I think whatever you were doing before backfired, or you wouldn’t be here, so let’s try again.”
His brows dropped lower and his lip curled back.
Okay. I might’ve overplayed my hand.
I watched as his nostrils flared and his mouth opened.
I’d definitely overplayed.
“Wait. I can’t agree on my own.”
“You lie, Shadow Walker.”
“If I start bringing your people through without an okay, I’m dead. You don’t believe me?” I stepped forward, hands on my hips, wondering if I’d lost my mind with my memories. “Then do your worst, because I’ll be dead anyway.”
We stared at each other, neither of us speaking. I didn’t think the guys were breathing. I would’ve sworn the birds had stopped chirping, waiting to see if the situation was going to literally go up in flames.
“You find out soon.” A couple residual whiffs of smoke came out as he spoke.
The mood went from a tornado about to touch down on top of us, to watching it off in the distance a few miles down the road. I didn’t know how soon that “soon” was. It wasn’t now, so I didn’t argue.
“How do I contact you?”
“Tell crawler to get Harg.”
His name sounded like he was trying to bring up a hairball. Again, something that didn’t need to be discussed at the moment. But there was another potential problem.
“And when I talk to this random crawler, what happens then? If there’s another explosion—”
“No fires until I say so.”
I nodded.
Harg nodded.
Then we all watched as he made his way slowly away from our building. I wasn’t sure any of us breathed until he was out of sight.
Chapter Fourteen
Jerry, Butch, Leon, and I were waiting in Kane’s office when he walked through an empty Underground half an hour later. I hadn’t asked Butch what Kane’s reaction was when he’d gotten through to him. As I stood by the window and watched him, he might as well have been striding into war from the determination of his steps and the sharpened angles of his face.
He climbed the stairs and paused right inside the door. Butch was loading up on caffeine by the Keurig, while Leon and Jerry were trying to appear relaxed on the couch. Kane’s attention was solely on me, where I stood by the window, even though there were three other people in the room staring at him.
Kane’s eyes bored through me like he’d just gotten back from the planet Krypton. “Who made the decision to talk to it?”
I lifted a shoulder, not feeling the need to vocalize what he already knew. That didn’t stop Jerry and Leon from serving me up for dinner, as they said, “Her,” at the same time.
I looked at Butch, about to thank him for not throwing me under the bus. Then I remembered he’d been the one to tell Kane in the first place, as soon as he’d been able to get him on the phone.
Kane’s stare was glued to me alone, and I was pretty certain it wasn’t going to shift until I acknowledged it. “I acted the best way I could in the moment. It’s not like there’s a manual on what to do when a crawler is trying to bang down the door.”
He shifted his attention to the others. I watched with a teaspoon of glee as they shifted in their seats now. Yeah, let’s see how you like it. So quick to throw me to the wolf.
“And you three went along with it?” Kane asked.
I couldn’t have sworn that he had given them instructions to avoid a situation like that. But I wouldn’t have bet against it, either.
“He was going to blow the building otherwise.” Butch threw his hands up as he shrugged an I fucked up; don’t kill me gesture. The other two sat mute on the couch, as still as a puddle in Antarctica.
“It wouldn’t have blown up anything.” Kane didn’t wait for the thaw before he strode toward his desk, dropping his phone roughly on the surface.
Butch shot me a look as Kane had his back turned. I wasn’t a mind reader, but was fairly certain that he thought I should be bailing him out of
this, considering it was my idea to talk to the thing.
I raised a hand and made a face back, as if to say, You aren’t my puppet. What happened to free will in this place?
He jutted his chin out.
I rolled my eyes, my head moving with the act. Fine. I’d take the heat, since the two Popsicles on the couch wouldn’t move. “It really looked like it was about to do just that.”
Kane turned toward me again. “It couldn’t.”
I narrowed my eyes. No way he could be sure of that.
He gave me a look that said he was. I guessed there was the possibility that he might know something I didn’t. It wasn’t out of the realm, but whatever. It was done now.
He leaned against the desk, crossing his arms.
“Why does it need you now?” he asked.
I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking it too. If they had used me in the past, whatever they’d done wasn’t working anymore.
I moved away from the windows, feeling the need to stretch my legs as something struck me. I paced a bit, but then stopped once I realized I kept walking closer and closer to Kane, my mind going back to how nice it felt to have him wrapped around me.
I shook my head and took a step away from him, getting back to the problem at hand. “The ones that have been spotted so far have all been bigger and stronger. Maybe they can’t get the weaker ones over the same way?”
“Plausible,” Kane said, and I glanced over my shoulder to see he’d uncrossed his arms and had them resting on either side of him, hands on the desk. An image of me standing in between his legs, in that very spot, sprang to mind. I didn’t know if it was a daydream or a memory, but I could nearly feel his lips searing my skin. My cheeks burned at the thought, and I coughed, even though I had no need, giving my skin an excuse for the flush.
Butch and the Popsicles might’ve bought it, but there was a heat in Kane’s eyes that made me think he knew exactly what had been running through my mind. Might’ve been running through his as well.
I scurried back over toward the window, a safer distance away. “I stalled us for a little, but time isn’t going to fix this problem. If I don’t help, they’re going to continue destroying things.”
Kissed by the Dark Page 9
