The World in Shadow (Eternal Warriors Book 2)

by Vox Day

  Jami followed Angie and Rachel to an empty table towards the back of the cafeteria. It offered some degree of privacy, as well as a good view from which Angie could provide running commentary on the people in the lunchroom if the mood struck her. Holli’s friend reminded Jami of a shark sometimes; if her mouth didn’t keep moving, Jami wondered if she’d just shut down all together. She had a vicious tongue and a nose for gossip, which was one reason to stay on her good side. The other was that she was a really good friend of Holli’s, and had been for a long time. Jami still couldn’t figure that one out.

  The lunch ladies had decided to take it easy on them today. Despite the fact that the meat in the hamburgers was of questionable origin, there was enough ketchup and mustard to drown out any funny non-burger tastes. It wasn’t exactly Burger King, or even White Castle, but at least they were edible.

  “Doesn’t look so good, does it,” Angie complained, removing the top half of her bun and staring at the patterns pressed into the hamburger patty. “I swear, I think I can see something that looks like suckers in there! You know what I mean, like on octopus tentacles?”

  Rachel stuck out her tongue and pushed her tray away.

  “I think I’ll take up smoking,” she said. “It can’t be any worse for you than eating this.”

  “Good idea,” Jami nodded in pretend agreement, knowing her friend wasn’t serious. “I think I will too, just as soon as they shorten the game time to fifteen minutes. I don’t think I can run the full ninety if I’m coughing up a lung.”

  Rachel laughed. She was a tall, slender girl who no one seemed to think was very pretty, although she had very nice features which she mostly hid behind her long, straight, brown hair. No one except Holli, that was, who predicted she would one day be a runway model. Rachel’s height made her awkward and self-conscious, and she tended to slouch a lot in order to avoid towering over the boys in their class. She was really nice, though, much nicer, Jami felt, than most of her friends.

  “Didn’t your season end last fall?” Angie asked with her mouth full.

  “It’s indoor now,” Jami reminded her. “The field’s small, but you still have to run a lot. In some ways it’s even worse, because you can’t rest when the ball’s at the other end the way you can on the big field in outdoor.”

  “Oh,” Angie said, clearly uninterested in the subject. Then she perked up.

  “Hey, doesn’t Jason Case play with you guys?”

  “Yeah, he’s our midfielder.”

  “I think he’s hot,” Holli’s friend confessed dreamily. “That one game I went to with you last fall, all I did was watch him run. He’s got nice legs.”

  “He’s all right,” Jami admitted. “Rache, what do you think about Christopher?”

  “Your brother?” She looked genuinely surprised by the question. “I don’t know. I don’t think he likes me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He didn’t say much to me when he drove us down to the Megamall last weekend. He was just so quiet, I thought maybe he was mad because you made him pick me up or something.”

  “You’re so clueless, Rachel,” Angie rolled her eyes. “He didn’t talk? So what. That doesn’t mean anything. If a guy likes you, he’s either going to pester you to death, you know, showing up at your locker every day and asking if you have notes for English, or he never says a word. They’ll just sit there and stare at you, with this blank look and their mouth hanging half-open. And they wonder why we don’t want to go out with them!”

  “At least they’re not pulling our hair, or hitting us and running away like they used to,” Jami pointed out, feeling Angie had somehow put her in the position of defending the boys.

  “Sure, but you have to admit it was easier then.” Angie patted Rachel’s hand. “If your brother would just slug her one and run away, we’d all know where he stood. Now, if he does have the hots for her, we’re all going to have to sit around and wait three weeks for him to get the courage up to ask her out!”

  “Gee, how inconsiderate of him,” Rachel murmured. “How dare he deprive you of something to talk about.”

  “Deprive me? I don’t think so. As long as there’s beer and parties, someone’s going to do something stupid that everyone wants to hear about. Besides, I was telling people he was ga-ga over you two weeks ago. I knew he wouldn’t stick with April Evenson. She’s pretty, but she’s too much of a corn-stuffed farm girl for him. She’s got those big dopey eyes, just like a cow.”

  “That’s what I said,” Jami agreed. “Okay, I didn’t say it quite like that, but she is a little… placid. But, you know, Holli thought she was nice, and she didn’t want to set Christopher up with someone who would hurt his feelings. He’s kind of sensitive, you know.”

  “I think he’s sort of, like, artistic, maybe” Rachel declared, glancing cautiously at Angie.

  “I don’t know,” Jami answered. “He likes to read, does that count? Oh, and he likes to paint his little army guys.”

  Angie nearly choked on the milk she was drinking.

  “That’s not artistic, that’s just being a geek.” She shrugged her shoulders. “You and Holli have done a nice job cleaning him up and all, and he’s kind of a cutie now, but face it, deep down he’s still a nerd.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rachel objected softly. “He’s changed a lot this semester. He’s, I don’t know, more confident, I guess.”

  “So go out with him then, already,” Angie sighed theatrically. “Look, enough about your brother, Jami. I have to tell you guys what I heard about Jill’s party. You’re never going to guess who hooked up….”

  As Angie happily launched into a detailed discussion of the weekend’s events, Jami wondered if Rachel really was interested in Christopher. She wasn’t all that keen on her brother going out with one of her friends, since that was a good way to lose the friend for at least a little while. Still, it gave her a sense of accomplishment to know that it wouldn’t be a joke anymore if one of the girls went out with him.

  Jami started when she heard Angie saying something about Holli.

  “What’s that?” she interjected.

  Angie wrinkled her nose at her.

  “Weren’t you listening? I just said that everybody knows Derek is going to ask Holli to prom.”

  “Isn’t it a little soon to be thinking about that?” Jami asked.

  Dumb question. It was never too soon, especially since there were never more than a few freshmen lucky enough to get asked by the juniors and seniors. Even Rachel gave her a look.

  “It’s only five weeks away,” the tall girl pointed out. “Not that I’ll be going.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Angie agreed carelessly. “Me neither, unless maybe I put on a bikini and hide myself in Jimmy Gertz’s locker. Think he’d be surprised.”

  “I know I would be,” Rachel said, looking a little miffed at Angie. “Jami, you can keep John busy while I get the lock changed. We’ll save the poor guy from going blind.”

  “Hey, I said I wasn’t going either,” Angie retorted. “Jeez, sensitive much? It’s not like it’s up to me or anything, I’m just telling you what I heard. And it’s no big deal if we don’t go. We’re only freshmen, we’ve got three more years to get all fluffed up and spend the night watching football players yak in the parking lot.”

  “Gee, and we’re not going? You make it sound like so much fun!”

  Jami was always amused by Angie’s ever-present cynicism.

  “Oh, I never said you weren’t,” Angie corrected her. “Heidi Thompson told Tammy Rosenquist that Robbie Dale was going to ask you. She’s got a big crush on him, and Tammy says she’s totally crushed now. She’s really mad at you.”

  “Heidi, or do you mean Tammy?” Jami sighed. “Whoever, she’ll have to get in line behind Jill Mondale. What is it with these psychos? I mean, sure, Robbie’s cute and from what everybody says, he’s a nice guy and all, but it’s not like he’s ever even talked to me. It’s not my fault if he likes m
e. If he really does.”

  Rachel nodded sympathetically, but Angie’s eyes suddenly lit up.

  “Ooh, ooh, ooh!” she blurted, so excited she could barely speak. “That reminds me, that reminds me what I forgot to tell you? Jill! Did you hear what happened to her at her party? It’s the best thing I ever heard!”

  Her voice dropped conspiratorally, and Jami guiltily looked to see who was in the vicinity, then leaned in closer so she could hear Angie’s latest. She knew it wasn’t right, but she just couldn’t help herself.

  “Okay, check this out! Dan O’Conner doesn’t get to the Mondale’s house until, like, almost midnight, right. And the thing is, when he gets there, no one can find Jill. So Ali Finden goes looking for her, and she hears this slow, like, total mood music coming out of Jill’s bedroom. She knocks on the door, but there’s no answer, so she peeks in there, and guess what? Jill’s only got a t-shirt on, and she’s messing around with some older guy from another school!”

  “No way!” Rachel gasped.

  Well, well, well. Jami found it impossible to feel bad for Jill. Some people deserved what they got, and Jill Mondale was one of them.

  “Can you believe it?” Angie was utterly gleeful. Jami knew she’d never liked Jill either. “I hear he’s from around here, but he goes to SPA. Someone said he even belongs to the same tennis club as Dan O’Conner!”

  “So what did Dan do?” Jami asked. “He must have been pretty mad!”

  “Oh, he was, he was. Ali warned Jill that Dan had showed up, and she came out real quick, but he figured out something was going on before she managed to get rid of the SPA guy. John Anderson and Mike Owen had to grab Dan to keep him from going after the guy in the driveway. Jill ended up kicking Dan out of the house too, but not before he poured beer all over the zebra-skin rug in the living room.”

  “I’m sure her Dad will like that,” Rachel commented.

  “Oh, like they’ll notice,” Angie dismissed the notion. “She’d have to burn the place down before they got a clue. I thought Holli was there, Jami, didn’t she tell you anything?”

  “Our curfew is eleven,” Jami reminded her. “She was already home by then.”

  “That’s right,” Angie nodded. “I forgot your Dad was, like, Amish. Eleven o’clock! That’s so medieval!”

  Jami wasn’t offended, she could only laugh at her sort-of friend. Not that she was an expert on the Dark Ages herself, but she knew that Angie had about as much a clue about what was medieval as she did about the structure of the atom. In other words, nothing. So how could you get mad at her for it? She pushed herself away from the table and stood up, stretching.

  “Well, if you’ll excuse me, Angela, I have to go get my chastity belt adjusted.”

  “Huh?” said Angie, puzzled, and Rachel laughed behind her hand.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said. The tall girl stood up and Jami saw her soft brown eyes were gently envious. “I think it’s nice to have a father who cares about you. I wish mine did.”

  As the garage door opened in front of him, Brien popped Sister Machine Gun out of the CD player and turned off the engine. He twirled the key ring around his finger as he contemplated whether to take his schoolbooks out of the trunk or not. He was hungry, though, and didn’t really feel like doing any homework tonight since he had the Obilisk text to look into, so he locked the doors and headed towards the garage. Mom’s car was there, but Dad’s wasn’t, which meant that there was a good chance he’d could talk Mom into making hamburgers tonight instead of the skinless, boneless, and tasteless chicken that Dad’s low-fat diet forced on them almost every night.

  “I’m home,” he yelled, slamming the door to the garage behind him. “Hey, if Dad’s working late tonight, do you think we could have burgers for dinner?”

  No one answered, so he shrugged off his jacket and draped it over an empty hanger. Still in a good mood from his mega-point win over Christopher Lewis, he whistled as he walked out of the coatroom and past the family room into the kitchen. But he stopped whistling when he saw Mom, sitting at the kitchen table with reddened eyes and an unopened bottle of Sam Adams in front of her.

  “Hey, Mom, what’s wrong?” he asked, wondering why she had a beer out. She was normally a wine drinker, if she drank at all.

  She had never been a pretty woman. Brien had seen pictures of her when she was younger, and she’d clearly been one of those poor girls who are inevitably and painfully described as ‘nice’. Time had not been kind to her; twenty pounds had not improved her figure, and the lines that now creased her face added character at the price of her complexion. Even so, she had a pleasant, charming smile and normally, she carried herself with the cheerful air of woman ten years younger. But now, as her red, puffy face sagged with grief and anger, she looked every one of her forty-three years.

  “Oh, Brien,” she said with a strangely sad tenderness, as she stood up heavily and moved towards him.

  The pity in her voice frightened him. The compassionate tones set off an alarm somewhere inside him that he didn’t even know he had. Disaster! His heart pounded. Death! Destruction! Something was wrong, terribly wrong!

  She tried to embrace him, but he pushed her away.

  “Mom, what is it!” He felt panic sweeping over him. “Did something happen to Dad?”

  Visions of accidents, crushed cars, burning buildings, suddenly filled his mind.

  “I’m so sorry. I just don’t know how to tell you this, Brien. Your… your father left.”

  “Left!” Brien stared incredulously at Mom. “What do you mean, left? What are you talking about?”

  He closed his eyes and swayed. The shrieking alarm exploded inside him, sending freezing slivers of ice coursing through his body. He was numb; he was frozen. He had the unmistakable impression that without warning, his ship had hit an iceberg and he’d suddenly been cast adrift in a cold and unforgiving sea.

  He felt an unbearably heavy weight upon his shoulders. Then he realized it was Mom, her hands were pressing down upon his shoulders. She was reaching up to him, forcing him to look at her. Her face was still red, but it was filled with anger now, not grief, and her voice trembled with barely suppressed rage.

  “What did you think I meant?” she snapped. “Your father is leaving me, he’s gone! Do you understand? He wants a divorce!”

  Brien shook his head, stunned by the D-word, reeling from the emotions that were threatening to hammer him down to his knees. Grief, emptiness, loss, and rage battled within him like four pit bulls fighting to the death.

  “What… what happened,” he whispered finally.

  Mom let go of him and turned away to stare out the window that looked over their backyard.

  “Your father,” she enunciated the words with a cold precision,“has been having an affair. From what I understand, it’s been going on for quite some time now.”

  “With who?”

  “Whom,” she corrected him absently. “A woman at his office. You wouldn’t know her. It doesn’t matter. I knew about her before….” She sighed and turned back to face him. “I thought it was over, but obviously, it wasn’t. He called me about an hour ago to tell me that Medtronic offered him a new job in Cleveland, and he’s going to take it. Then, after telling me about that, he finally got around to mentioning that he doesn’t want me to come with him.”

  “Oh, God,” Brien breathed, horror-stricken. No. No! Dad was leaving Mom? How could he even think of it?

  “We’ve been married twenty-two years,” Mom said, shaking her head. “Twenty-two years, and that… that…. He didn’t even have the nerve to tell me to my face!”

  It wasn’t possible. Surely Dad couldn’t do this to her, he wouldn’t. To them! Would he? Even as Brien’s mind railed violently against the unthinkable, one small voice made itself heard through his inner turmoil. He would, you know. Oh, yes, he would.

  “No, there’s got to be a mistake, a misunderstanding, or something,” Brien protested, refusing to give up hope. “Maybe y
ou, I don’t know, maybe you heard him wrong!”

  His objections sounded ridiculous even to his own ears. Mom didn’t reply, she only shook her head sadly. She reached out to him again, and this time he let her hold him, as if her arms could somehow take this terrible pain away. Of the four pit bulls at war, it was grief that won out, and he could not fight the tears that began to flow from his eyes. But even as a sob ripped itself painfully from his lips, the other three emotions, dogs beaten but not vanquished, lurked within his heart and bided their time.

  He cried against Mom’s shoulder, and she cried against his. They held each other for a long time, as if their little circle of tears could somehow erase what had happened. There didn’t seem to be any bottom to his sorrow, and the monstrous depth of that dark void startled him even as he felt his chest heaving with one involuntary convulsion after another.

  But finally, he mastered himself and he pulled himself away, wiping at his eyes. He reached into his pocket and found his keys, knowing what he had to do. Even as the tears dried on his face, Brien could feel the void inside him filling rapidly with an anger so strong it made his hands shake. It was bubbling, frothing furiously inside him, and he knew he had to leave before it spilled over and destroyed everything around him.

  “Brien, where are you going?” Mom pulled at his arm. “Where are you going?”

  He shook her off, gently, but with determination.

  “I’m going to Dad’s office,” he informed her. His voice was glacial. “He’s not going to do this to you!”

  Chapter 14

  Shattered

  So tear me open but beware

  There's things inside without a care

  And the dirt still stains me

  —Metallica, (“Until It Sleeps”)

  “I’m here to see Mr. Henry,” Brien told the receptionist calmly. He was pleased with how controlled his voice sounded. The drive over had calmed him a little, and despite his utter fury, he had no desire to create a scene. “Is he in his office? I’m his son.”