by Bill Hiatt
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
What Has Gone Before
Chapter 1: Prelude (Umbra)
Chapter 2: Strange Shadows (Lucas)
Chapter 3: Fighting Shadows (Lucas)
Chapter 4: Interlude (Umbra)
Chapter 5: Dancing with Shadows (Lucas)
Chapter 6: Power Failure (Lucas)
Chapter 7: Another Interlude (Umbra)
Chapter 8: Shadows of Armageddon (Lucas)
Chapter 9: Like a Dream (Lucas)
Chapter 10: Postlude (Umbra)
The Adventure Isn't Over
About the Author
We Walk in Darkness
By Bill Hiatt
With cover art by
Peter O’Connor
Copyright © 2015 by William A. Hiatt
All rights are reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without written permission from the author.
The cover illustration and design were created by Peter O’Connor of Bespoke Book Covers (http://bespokebookcovers.com/). All rights are reserved. This image may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Names of places and companies are either fictional or are used fictionally.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the Beverly Hills High School English Department. On dark days my fellow English teachers were often my light.
What Has Gone Before
We Walk in Darkness is the fifth book in the Spell Weaver series. If you are interested in reading the previous books first, you can find links to them in “The Adventure Isn’t Over.” However, if you can’t wait to read this book, I have tried to include in the text enough information about earlier events in the Spell Weaver series to make it possible for someone new to the series to understand and enjoy the adventures in this book without having read the earlier ones. In fact, this book is probably the closest to being a stand-alone work since the first book in the series.
Chapter 1: Prelude (Umbra)
“Umbra!” snapped the Praeceptor. “Enough of these senseless questions!”
As always, though I could barely see her, I could hear her clearly. My ability to see without light still required some distinction to work, and she was virtually indistinguishable from the shadows that surrounded us both.
“I ask your pardon, Praeceptor,” I replied with what I hoped was the right amount of humility, “but I did not raise the question out of idle curiosity. My physical form is not as well-suited to the work. I thought perhaps if I understood why I was not like the others—”
I saw what might have been an impatient wave of an arm in the darkness to my left.
“Your physical form is adequate to the purpose, or you would not have been chosen for training,” the Praeceptor replied. “That is all you need to know.”
“My skin is so much paler though. Will I not be more visible in the darkness?”
She sighed. “The proper application of shadow magic will still conceal you, and there may actually be times when your appearance will be an advantage.”
“I understand, Praeceptor.” I wasn’t really satisfied, but I knew that was as much answer as I would get. Pressing further would only make her angry, and I knew from experience how much I did not want the Praeceptor to be angry with me.
“That is well,” she replied, “for your training is nearly at its end, and you will soon begin your trials.”
Her touch chilled my left arm. “I cannot stress enough the importance of performing well. Your failure would not reflect well on me, and…there would be no further use for you.”
She did not need to tell me what that meant. If I had no further use, my existence would be ended.
“I will do what is required,” I said. Had I said more, my voice might have shaken just a little, and then the Praeceptor would have lectured me again about the importance of emotional control.
“Your first trial involves a human,” she said.
A human? That made no sense to me. I was afraid to speak but decided I had to take the chance. I had to know the nature of the trial if I was to succeed.
“Would our real targets ever be human? Wouldn’t our services be needed more for someone not so easily killed?”
The Praeceptor laughed, but the sound conveyed contempt rather than amusement. “Our services are needed wherever a dominus says they are needed, and have I not told you a thousand times? Never underestimate a target. The subject of your trial is human, yes, but he has certain unusual skills. We suspect he may have some faerie ancestry. I will tell you all that is known of him before the trial begins. Remember one thing: the trials will never pit you against someone you could dispatch too easily. What would be the point of that?”
“I understand, Praeceptor,” I replied, though in truth I still did not. A human who was part faerie? I had never heard of such a thing. From what I had been taught, humans had no special skills that one of us would need to fear.
“In that case, we are nearly done for today,” said the Praeceptor. “Recite the affirmation for me, and your lesson will be at an end.”
There, at least, was a task that raised no questions I did not know how to answer. “We walk in darkness, for light is death to us. We strike in darkness, for we cannot be seen. We kill in darkness, for that is our purpose, and without purpose we ourselves would die.”
I had known those words for as long as I could remember. Usually they comforted me, but not today. Today I had questions the affirmation alone could not banish.
Chapter 2: Strange Shadows (Lucas)
“Hey, Twinkle Toes, wait up!” yelled Gavin, running to catch up with me.
I walked faster on purpose. Yeah, he was my best friend, but that didn’t mean I had to put up with the nickname.
Predictably, Gavin, as fast in everyday life as he was on the football field or the baseball diamond, caught up with me without breaking a sweat. “Uh, sorry, man. I forgot you don’t like me to call you that. You don’t have to ignore me.”
“You’re too big to ignore anyway, Goliath,” I said with a chuckle.
He winced. Apparently, nicknames were OK as long as they didn’t apply to him.
“Truce!” he said, holding up his hands, and I nodded. After all, best friends did get to annoy each other from time to time—and we’d been best friends so long we might as well have been twin brothers. In all that time, though, I never told Gavin why the nicknames bothered me.
It wasn’t because I was the star of our high school’s dance program. Whatever self-consciousness I might have had about dancing—and it’s hard for a guy to be a dancer in high school, believe me—faded away when I started capoeira. I had Dad to thank for that, although when he said I could pursue dance as long as I also did a martial art, I doubt he had capoeira in mind. I could have resented his insistence on martial arts, since it clearly suggested that there was something wrong with just being a dancer and that I had to balance it out with something more traditionally masculine. Instead of reacting hostilely, though, I found a martial art so closely related to dance that the two disciplines would reinforce each other. As an added bonus, because capoeira was Brazilian and so were we, Dad couldn’t object too loudly; after all, I was just exploring my cultural roots.
In any case, any frustration he might have had over my choice faded as I progressed rapidly through the cord levels (like belts in other martial arts). There were several different cord systems, but my mestre used the one created by Confederacao Brasileira de Capoeira. Under that system, at the last batizado, I had been awa
rded the verde amarelo azul (green, yellow, and blue) cord of the formado, the first of the advanced levels. Higher levels had to be earned by teaching capoeira as well as practicing it. Mestre Ribeiro had made a big deal out of the fact that he had never had a student progress as fast as I had. My parents both beamed at that, and I knew my dad would never hassle me about dance again.
Actually, no one gave me grief about dance since the day two years ago when I efficiently dealt with a couple of bullies who thought the dancing sissy would be an easy mark. I used restraint, so neither one of them ended up in the hospital…but they did come close.
So no, I wasn’t uncomfortable with being a dancer. I was uncomfortable with the fact that I was a freak.
Around twelve, when I first started puberty, I began to experience visions of some kind—not hallucinations, but genuine psychic events. One of the first was seeing Gavin get injured in a middle-school football game before he actually did. I had the vision only a minute or so before the actual event, not really in time to warn him, and that was usually the way those visions seemed to work. It was like my mind somehow fast-forwarded just enough to see what was right ahead, and then moved back into the present. I never told anyone about this, not even Gavin. Being able to do that kind of thing made me feel strange. The fact that it was a basically useless ability didn’t help.
I didn’t go glassy-eyed or anything while I was having visions, so they were easy to cover up. Not so easy to hide was my speed. Also when I was around twelve, I discovered that I could move faster than a normal guy. I don’t mean comic-book-superhero fast, but fast enough to make a dance choreographer pause and blink, fast enough to cause Mestre Ribeiro to do a double-take. As soon as I realized what was happening, I restrained myself, but that kind of self-discipline wasn’t easy, especially during high adrenalin moments. The temptation to dominate at capoeira was sometimes nearly overwhelming.
I didn’t exactly expect people to take me out and burn me at the stake. I didn’t actually know what to expect. But I already stuck out like a sore thumb in a small central California town with a good share of rednecks. Aside from being a male dancer, I was Hispanic with an African American best friend. I was dark-skinned and dark-haired enough to have been told to go back where I came from more than once. You wouldn’t think I’d get that in a predominately Hispanic county, but I did. I could only imagine what would happen if people found out I was…well, that was another problem. Even I didn’t know what I was. Alien (I mean the extraterrestrial kind)? Mutant? Changeling? I had no clue.
My doctor hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary during my annual physicals. Probably just as well, but I would have liked to know what was up with me…as long as I could keep that knowledge to myself.
Gavin and I were approaching the diner on Main Street, and since dance rehearsal had run long, as had Gavin’s baseball practice, we both should have probably headed home. However, Gavin, who ate like food was about to go out of style, wanted to stop and get some fries. His metabolism was so fast, I half expected him to starve walking home from school—or at least, his complaints about how hungry he was would give me that impression. How could I say no to a friend in need?
Gavin opened the door, and I was hit by a blast of air conditioning, which felt pretty good after a day that could easily have fit July, though we had barely started April. (Our town’s a little east of Merced; think Merced, but even hotter—and Merced sometimes gets to ninety degrees in the shade before summer even starts.)
What didn’t feel so good was the sudden, sharp feeling that we shouldn’t stay there, that we needed to go home. Either Mom had started sending me psychic broadcasts, or this was another one of my premonitions, though this time there was no actual vision, just a feeling.
I looked around quickly. Traffic on Main Street was pretty minimal, with no sign of an impending drive-by shooting or anything like that. The interior of the diner didn’t look threatening, either.
“Lucas!” shouted Sally, the diner’s owner, from inside. “Come in, or go out. I don’t want to pay to air condition the great out of doors!”
“Sorry.” I stepped inside, with Gavin right behind me. That was the last thing that I wanted to do, but I couldn’t very well tell Gavin that I was getting a psychic red alert of some kind, and I couldn’t think fast enough to come up a decent excuse that would get me out of there.
I steered us to a booth with a good window view of the street and a view of the front door, though how much that would help if someone did a drive-by shooting or barged in with guns blazing, I didn’t know.
The diner wasn’t too busy, so our duplicate orders of fries and a Coke appeared pretty fast. I was all about finishing everything so we could leave, but Gavin, who usually ate like a giant piranha, was uncharacteristically slow, pushing each fry through the ketchup like he was trying to dig a hole in his plate.
“Lucas, what’s up?” Gavin finally asked. I guessed my fidgeting was unnerving him.
I made a big show of checking the time. “Uh, I think my mom plans on serving dinner around seven thirty, and it’s that now, that’s all.”
Gavin grinned. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t even notice the sun setting…but I thought you told me your dad wouldn’t be home until eight tonight.”
That was the problem with having a friend who knew me too well. Gavin actually remembered my dad’s schedule even though I had forgotten it.
I faked a quick smile. “You’re right. Dance rehearsal was so hard today that I must have blown out a few brain cells.”
His eyes narrowed a little. “Lucas, I’ve seen you in dance…and in capoeira. It never looks hard for you.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” I said, trying to sound casual as I motioned the waitress for the check.
“Nothing’s wrong, is it?” Aside from knowing my dad’s schedule better than I did, Gavin could read me better than a seismologist could read a Richter scale.
“Nah, G, it’s all good,” I lied. “I’m just nervous for no reason.”
“OK. Just checking.” He put down his share of the check and tip, clearly taking the hint that I wanted to leave.
I did the same, and I breathed a sigh of relief as we got out of the diner without incident. Evidently my psychic powers were off this time. There still wasn’t a sign of trouble in any direction as I said good-bye to Gavin and we went our separate ways.
The diner was right on the boundary between the tiny business district and a small web of residential streets that curved gently away from the center of town. Madisonville (or Hicksville, as I tended to refer to it in private), was the result of some developers noticing a little vacant land and saying to themselves, “Why not put a town here?” I think my parents said something about it being intended as a bedroom community for people who worked in Merced, and indeed, practically all of my friends’ parents commuted every day to one of the surrounding areas.
Merced at least had history. Madisonville, conjured up strictly for economic reasons, never felt as if it had a soul. Everything was relatively new, including our house—and pretty much every other house in town, as far as that was concerned. We lived in a nice two-story, but, to maximize profit, the developers squeezed as many houses as they could into a relatively confined space. The result was that most of the houses, mine included, had backyards so small and narrow that if you put in a hot tub, no one could walk from one end of the yard to the other without wading part of the way.
I was about halfway home when I noticed something odd. I was surrounded by what passed for darkness in Western society, but, of course, there was always enough electric light to keep the sky from being totally dark, and the street I was walking down, like every other street in town, had its share of streetlights. Still, there were some shadowy areas, mostly along the sides of houses. I was used to that.
What I wasn’t used to was the way a shadow seemed to have detached itself from its surroundings and started following me. That could have been an optical illusion of some kind,
but I was getting another jolt of psychic warning, still not a vision, but the strongest warning I’d ever felt. Even the time I almost got hit by a car wasn’t this intense.
Nonetheless, I resisted the urge to run screaming down the street. Instead, I blinked a couple of times, and the wandering shadow seemed to disappear. The feeling didn’t though. Something was just not right. I might not like having these psychic nudges, but I’ll say this for them: they had never been wrong.
Getting home seemed to be the best plan. I still had a ten-minute walk. My muscles were sore from dance, but I ignored their protest as I sped up. Instead of fading, though, the feeling of foreboding grew more overwhelming.
What’s the best way to get out of trouble when you don’t know what the trouble is and can’t ask for help? I could just imagine what calling nine-one-one would be like. “Yeah, officer, I just had a feeling something bad was about to happen.” nine-one-one operators deserve a good laugh as much as anybody, but I wasn’t about to provide it if I could help it.
I was near enough to my house that I knew several of the families who lived in the area, but I couldn’t think fast enough to develop an excuse for just dropping in.
I was about two blocks from my house, and the psychic alarm bells were deafening…but why? I was running toward safety…wasn’t I? What I needed was a vision, but I still had only the feeling.
Ahead and to my left, a shadow flickered away from the flowering cherry tree I thought was casting it and glided in my direction. Either I was crazy, or the shadow was stalking me—and now it was between me and home.
I thought about circling back, but the shadow was picking up speed and was almost upon me.
Still not knowing what I was dealing with, I turned and ran, abandoning all restraint and accelerating to full speed, praying no one was looking out the window as I blasted past.
