“You want this,” she said holding out the shining Tears of the Spirit. “I want him back.”
Anthony had sacrificed his brother to the underworld. The massive monstrous thing in front of her, with its dark, bony façade and its knife-like crimson glare, was the king and controller of that world. It owned William Jonathon Littlesoldier, and Penelope knew that only the Shadow Lord could give him back.
It didn’t smile but regarded Penelope in a way that made her want to squirm with fear. She wanted to find a sharp stick with which to stick the thing, and she wanted to protect herself from its intense scrutiny.
“The stone for the human’s soul?” it rephrased her demand, and the sound grated on Penelope’s last nerve.
“I want Will back the way he was, alive, his heart beating, his innate goodness. I want him back, and then you’ll get the stone. That’s the only bargain I’m offering,” she said forcibly. This might not be the devil that her mother had talked about in stories, but it was capable of reneging on a deal, and she wanted to give it no leverage with which to do so.
The Shadow Lord tilted its skeletal head as it considered her. “The soul of a warrior sorcerer is a powerful thing.”
“You were willing to deal with Anthony,” she said. “He wanted you to give up control of your world. He wanted to have power over you. Now I’m offering it back to you and more. You can take it, in exchange for Will. Nothing more and nothing less. But first he comes back, as he was.”
The Shadow Lord made its decision. A noise came out of its toothy mouth. Despite the warmth of the Tears of the Spirit, it chilled her to the very depths of her soul. It lasted as long as a call to arms. The sound was a beckoning of something to come. It was something that she didn’t want to see, and it turned her stomach to know that she would have to look upon it.
Something black and vaguely human crawled from the splintered earth. Penelope didn’t know what it was at first, except that it was grimly dark and shadow-like. Its eyes were dimly red, and it was like the shadow people she had seen. The figure winced away from the light, and Penelope twisted the black diamond away so that it could crouch in the gloom that she was making with her own body.
It was Will, and unwillingly, he had become one of the Shadow Lord’s chattels.
“You want this,” came the Shadow Lord’s awful voice. One skeletal hand indicated the shadow person that Will had become.
“Do we have a deal?” she said in a choking voice.
“We have a deal,” the Shadow Lord agreed. Its wasted fingers twisted in the air, and with a terrible groan of combined pain and emotion, the shadow creature that was Will dissipated into black mist. It flowed effortlessly back into his body.
A moment later, Will opened his eyes and coughed. Then he was utterly still. Penelope watched with her breath hitching in her chest as if she couldn’t truly believe that it would happen. However, he blinked and rolled his head to the side to look at her. “Penelope,” he said. “What have you done?”
Penelope rushed to his side and crouched beside Will. She looked down into his face and could see that it was truly him. She touched his chest where Anthony had plunged the knife into him and found it whole. The lord of the underworld had fulfilled its side of the bargain.
The Shadow Lord grinned widely with its black-toothed smile. “The stone, thief,” it said. It held out a lifeless hand. “Give it to me or forfeit for our bargain.”
Penelope looked up and knew what would happen the moment she gave up the Tears of the Spirit. The Shadow Lord was a thing, like all the other things. He would extinguish the light of this world and make it a continuation of his own. But as she looked upward and saw that the totality of the eclipse was about to end, she knew what she had to do.
*
The last child had been freed, and Jake held two little hands in each of his own as he led them up the hill. He’d had to disengage each from his digits and push them through the hole he’d dug with his hands that led under the fence, but they’d reattached themselves to him like the suction cups of a squid. The third shuddering child was thrown over his shoulder. He looked back and thought that if the woman down there was, in fact, Penelope Quick, then she was about to play the bad end of a game of “Smear the Queer.” She held the glowing stone in her hand which held the demons at bay, but it didn’t look as though she was going to come out on top.
At the crest of the hill, Jake was huffing and puffing. He put the one sobbing child down and hissed impatiently, “Jeez, kid, I see these kinds of things every time I stop drinking, so calm down.”
The little blonde girl waited anxiously for them at the top. “I didn’t know where to go,” she wailed. “My father’s a ‘torney and he’ll sue everyone until they only got Alpo to eat!”
Jake didn’t know how he managed it, but he grabbed all the hands of the children and led them toward the Jeep and John Rife’s truck. If John didn’t come back within ten minutes he was taking the truck and driving into Flute, where he would drop the kids off at the sheriff’s office, followed by a stop at Tom’s Pub.
They had gone perhaps a quarter mile when the earth began to shake again.
*
John opened the door to the missile silo and prepared for the worst. But instead there was a bedazzling light that poured into every part of the doors and briefly blinded him. He blinked several times to clear his vision. Then he saw that Penelope Quick was occupied with her own problems, namely something that looked like a very large blackened skeleton, dressed in dark clothing, and with eyes that glowed as fiercely red as the other things John had faced long before. It loomed over Penelope, and they appeared to make some kind of mutual decision. But it was her proximity to the threatening beast that made her outcome uncertain.
In his haste to exit the silo, Charlie bumped into the back of both John and Jessica. “Say,” he said nervously, “is that the girl you came looking for?”
John put a warning finger up in front of his mouth indicated that Charlie should keep his big trap shut.
“Penelope?” Jessica whispered. “Is he talking about Penelope?”
Charlie took Jessica’s arm and led her around the back of the concrete enclosure that was the silo’s entrance. “Shh, Mrs. Quick. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
“What about the children?” she said urgently.
Charlie looked up the gentle hill and saw Jake with several small shapes clinging frantically to him. “They’re safe,” he said. “Thank God. Now for us, too. The boss will get your daughter.”
Jessica looked over her shoulder as if she could see what he was talking about, but after a moment obediently followed Charlie’s lead.
John stared out at Penelope and watched another black shape emerge from the huge crack that splintered across the ground. Then with his mouth open and his hand held tightly around his shotgun, he helplessly watched the rest.
*
“We’ve got a deal, all right,” Penelope said to the Shadow Lord. She reached for Anthony’s obsidian knife with her free hand and sliced the rope that bound him hand and foot. Then she said to Will, “Are you all right?”
Will coughed again and spat out a mouthful of blackened blood. He sat up and stared at the Shadow Lord. “I’m all right,” he said. “What have you done, Penelope? The Shadow Lord is like the biblical Satan. His evil is eternal and will never bend to your will.”
“The stone,” the Shadow Lord said, its dreadful voice more insistent.
Penelope helped Will to his feet and gave him a gentle push. “You need to leave.”
Will stumbled as he went and crumpled to one knee. His handsome face scrutinized hers, intent on his stand. “No, I won’t leave.”
She looked at him and winked. Will caught the action, and his mouth dropped open. Penelope stood up straight and stared at the Shadow Lord. With the obsidian knife and a movement so quick that no one could have anticipated it, she slashed open her forearm.
The Shadow Lord screamed wretchedly.
Blood immediately began to spill down her arm onto her wrist and onto the black diamond. Contemplatively, she said, “If Will’s blood opened the chasm, then more blood should close it. I remember what the coyotes in my vision said. I am not alone. I am never alone.”
With a rapid flick of the knife, she scattered her own blood across the broken earth. The earth began to quiver anew.
The Shadow Lord looked around itself and stepped backwards into the trembling crack. As it descended into its dominion, it stared ruthlessly at Penelope, silently planning its vengeance upon her. As the fracture was about to close entirely, she easily tossed the Tears of the Spirit into the rift. A hoarse yell of triumph echoed back to them.
Then all was still. The moon’s pearly face began to come out of the shadow of the Earth and nothing around them moved.
Will shuddered and asked again, “What have you done, Penelope?”
“I made a deal,” she said dully. “But you might look at the bright side, Will. The path can never be opened with the Tears of the Spirit again. It needs your blood and the diamond to control those who walk in the underworld. It can never again have both.”
Will stood up and took her arm in his. He pushed his fingers around the wound on her forearm and muttered, “We’ve got to get something around that.”
A moment later, they were holding each other tightly. Her arms were wrapped around his neck and she was pressing her body tightly against his.
John Rife stepped out of the shadows of the door to the silo and said with a tremulous voice, “I don’t know what the hell happened, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep without a night light for months, if ever.”
“Mr. Rife,” Penelope said over Will’s shoulder, “did you get my mother out? The children?”
“Oh, yes. Your mother’s at your Jeep. I reckon that’s where Jake took the four young ones.” John stared around him, dumbfounded. “I know we got to call the police, but I don’t have a clue in hell what I’m going to say to them.”
Penelope hugged Will tightly to her and thought, I sure as hell don’t know either. “Will,” she said, “maybe we can leave the part out about me stealing stuff, huh?”
Will didn’t say anything, but merely grabbed her more closely.
In the distance a pack of cheerful coyotes began to howl at the emerging moon. It was an oddly reassuring sound.
Epilogue
Saturday, August 30th - Dallas, Texas
Pip (slang, origin unknown, probably 1920s American) - extraordinary person or thing
Thanks to Will Littlesoldier, it was Penelope’s first job, and she was amused that she was actually enjoying it. It was a specialized occupation. She got paid to ensure that people’s homes were properly secured against burglars. She also got to investigate thefts, but the company didn’t quite trust her to work alone yet. She had wanted to put down the name of Mary Jane Kelly on her application, but it was the time for truthfulness. She was on something called probation. It wasn’t the kind of probation that the authorities had over convicted criminals, but she was keenly aware of the implications. That was especially so because she had been upfront with the company’s owner and business manager about her past transgressions.
However, they wanted someone who could be smarter than the average thief. They wanted someone like Penelope. She had to pass a polygraph test confirming her good intentions toward the future, such as not using the company as cover for future creeps. She also had to sign a form validating the fact of the matter. If she were caught in the act of committing a felony, then she would forfeit all pay, perks, and allowances due to her by the company, etc…
All for a regular paycheck, and Penelope just about had a fit when she found out how much the government liked to deduct from her hard-earned cash.
There was also the matter of retribution. The retribution had nothing to do with her employer but everything to do with the change in her personal values. She returned the American Indian jewelry and cash to the Emunclaw tribe in Oregon. She made an abbreviated list of those individuals who had suffered because of her. There was Jeremy’s girlfriend in the Caribbean. There was Sammy’s family. There was Jobe’s family. There was Alan Harcourt’s family. There was the police officer who had been injured aboard the DART train, Frank the security guard at Cedars on the Ridge.
When the police ascertained that the remains of one Jeremy Collins had been located in the bottom of the missile silo outside of Abilene, Texas, his lawyer had executed his will, and surprisingly, Penelope had been his main beneficiary. It turned out that Jeremy had been a prolific thief and more active than Penelope had known. Despite his extravagant spending habits, he had saved a significant amount. She had paid the taxes on it and separated the remainder between the ones she felt responsible for hurting. Anonymously, of course.
Jeremy was responsible for his own death, her inner voice reminded her icily. Something inside her was still pissed that she hadn’t kept some of the money for Jessica. But Penelope didn’t need to remind herself that Jessica wouldn’t take another dime from her daughter. Stoically, if not amicably, she had refused the offer, and immediately found herself a job at Cedars on the Ridge, teaching new skills to the blind there. She was also wearing a very nice-sized engagement diamond on her left hand, a gift from Freddy Clark, who had recovered from his injuries without complication. And Jessica had moved in with her fiancée.
The police questioned the hell out of Penelope and the rest concerning the kidnapped children, but Penelope kept to a simple story about Jessica being an innocent bystander. It was impressive to see a detective get so frustrated speaking to her blind mother. Jessica played on her alleged frailties and denied that she knew why she had been taken. The media had come to the conclusion that Anthony was a certifiable loon, and his counterparts had escaped justice. But they were still vowing to catch the other perpetrators. John Rife and his two cattle hands didn’t know exactly what they had witnessed and had no problem with the truth. Penelope had asked for their help, and they had helped.
The Dallas Police Department couldn’t positively identify Penelope as the thief who had broken into the Durfrene Row house. To be specific, since Anthony had denied the break-in, they couldn’t even prove there had been a crime. And they didn’t know what to make of the decomposed corpse of one Merri Littlesoldier, who had been found inside the house days later. The pathologist had estimated that she had been dead for years and that Anthony must have been transporting the remains around with him.
After a month, the commotion had died down as the press had moved onto the next scandal, leaving a much relieved Penelope.
So on a quiet Saturday afternoon, she sat at her desk and looked at the security plans for an upper-middle-class house in Plano. She examined the photographs and made a few notes on how to improve the security of the house. When she was done, she completed the file, typed up her notes on a desktop computer, and filed the whole thing in her personal safe.
It wasn’t creeping, but it wasn’t altogether bad. Sometimes she even got to break in to test security systems.
Will had given a statement to the police regarding his suspicions about his brother’s actions. They had verified his statements and released him. He had called her cell phone, or rather Jeremy’s cell phone, a few days later and told her he would be returning to Oregon for a few weeks. She hadn’t known what to say to him.
Penelope put her head into her hands, propping her elbows on her desk, and thought, Well, how the heck else do you tell a man that you think he’s incredibly sexy, and by the way, do we have any chance of starting up a relationship? She didn’t know. She hadn’t had to work at it before. Will seemed to be interested in her as the heroine, not the woman.
Thffft, her inner voice said. Wait ‘til he gets back in town. Put on a little black number and heels. Don’t forget the make-up. Then ask him out. You can be blunt. If he says no, well, then you tried, didn’t you? The problem with that was that she was very much afraid o
f her reactions if he did, in fact, say no.
“Working on a Saturday?” a voice asked from behind her.
Penelope rubbed her eyes. There she was, thinking about him, and he appeared as if by magic. Slowly she turned and saw Will standing at the doorway to the little office she shared with three other security experts. Wearing worn jeans and a yellow polo shirt, he was leaner. His face had a gaunt appearance that accentuated his high cheekbones, but altogether, he didn’t look like a man who had been a guest in the underworld.
“You’re not normally at a loss for words,” he commented idly. “It makes me think something’s wrong.”
Her mouth opened. Then she forced some inane words from inside her. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting you. You surprised me.”
Will folded his arms over his chest. “Joseph John had me in a cleansing ritual for the better part of two weeks. There was darkness smeared on my soul. Or so he said. Actually, I feel fine. I haven’t drowned any kittens, and I don’t even have a taste for red meat.” A slight warming smile curved his lips and he added, “I think Joseph John would like to get his hands on you to do the same.”
Penelope wasn’t sure what to say. Speak, stupid, instructed her inner voice wrathfully. Before he gets away. Say something witty and amusing and alluring. “I don’t know if I want to do another ritual with Joseph John. I seem to have changes made to me, whether I like it or not.”
“Peter,” Will said carefully, referring to the owner of the company that now employed Penelope and a friend of his, “says that you’re working out wonderfully. Not so much as a paper clip has gone missing.”
The smile that Penelope plastered across her face was not one of amusement. “Office supplies are beneath my notice.”
Will put his hands into the air disarmingly. “I was joking. Penelope, you’re going to have to develop a thick skin about your past cat burglary days. I assume they are behind you.”
Shadow People Page 39
