by Fleur Smith
“We can’t leave her like this,” I cried as I snapped up into a seated position. “She helped you! She helped both of us! You can’t leave her this way!”
He caressed my face softly with his hands. “We can’t stay. The neighbors will have heard the screaming. For all we know the police are already right around the corner. Now think, what did you touch?”
Even though I didn’t want to listen to him, I knew he was right. The part of me that had absorbed Dad’s teachings and a hundred life lessons since his death was poised for escape—if only I could find the urgency to follow through with it. I pointed to the knife I’d dropped.
“Go wash up,” he ordered.
I couldn’t move.
“Quickly, Evie. Please?”
Numb down to my core, I dragged myself to my feet and headed to the bathroom. Catching a glimpse at myself in the mirror, I hated what I found. The singlet I wore was smeared with the deep maroon of innocent blood. Strands of my hair were clumped together with the thick fluid. Trying to disregard the fact that the stains belonged to someone I’d been having a conversation with less than twenty minutes earlier, I washed away all the traces I could.
Without warning, the vision of the man forcing the knife through Zarita’s skin invaded my mind, and I hurled into the sink. My stomach coiled around itself, and I stood there dry heaving until Clay came into the room and guided me away. His gentle but firm hold led me through the apartment and straight to the stairs.
It was only when Clay climbed back into the car after finishing off his cleanup of the apartment that I spoke again. Facing Clay, I was curled into a ball on the passenger seat with my knees drawn up into my chest. “What did you mean when you said I’ve got a shadow?”
Clay stared straight ahead as he started the car, no doubt trying, like me, to force the last trip we’d had in it out of his mind. “They’re a creature that very little is known about. They’re like ghosts, but not quite. They can be relentless in their stalking, and from everything we know, they’re malignant. They will chase their selected target for years until either driving them mad or killing them.”
“Why didn’t it kill me then?” I asked as the memory of Zarita’s murder rushed through me again. “It was right there, but it took her instead. Why?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“How does it keep finding me, Clay?” I cried.
He scrubbed his face. “God, I don’t know, Evie. But I promise, I won’t let it find you again. As soon as I can, I’ll let Eth know about it so he can start some research.”
We drove in silence for a few moments.
“I’m sorry about Zarita.” I had barely met her and although we could’ve been friends, it was guilt I felt over her death rather than anything else. For Clay though, it had to be worse. He had to be hurting. “I know she meant a lot to you.”
He nodded curtly. “She knew the risks though,” he said, as if reminding himself.
“She thought she was the reason my mother died.”
“What?” he asked, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
“She told me while you were gone.”
“She never told me that.”
We fell silent again, each of us lost in our own thoughts while Clay put miles between us and the scene of her death.
“Clay?”
“Yeah?”
“How did you find her? You said you’d got her name from the Rain, but it wasn’t was it?”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a brief second. When he opened them again, his entire focus was set hard on the road in front of us. He raked his hands through his hair before chewing the inside of his cheek. Then he sighed.
“It was from the Rain.” He turned his face away from me, blocking his thoughts from me.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, certain there was more Clay was leaving unsaid.
He glanced sideways at me, reaching across the small car for my hand. “After leaving Charlotte with my family, I looked up your mother on the Rain database.”
I sat up straighter. “They keep a database?”
Had they kept records of years—decades and possibly even centuries—of murder?
The edges of his lips turned down into a frown. “Whenever an operative encounters something new, they log it in the database. Phoenixes are very rare.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” I snapped.
“I’m sorry. This is why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“She was there though, wasn’t she?” I pushed. “Mom, I mean. They murdered her and then cataloged her like some goddamned museum piece?”
Clay nodded. “I found her, and it had information about your father there and a failed attempt to kidnap you when you were small.” Tears welled in his eyes.
I sobbed. I’d known about the attack, it was the reason Dad had gone deep into hiding to save my life, before that we’d been an almost normal single-parent family. Regardless of knowing that it had happened, the fact that someone had willingly planned an attack on a toddler made my stomach turn. That Clay had mentioned kidnap and not kill sent the warmth of panic racing through me again.
“Linked to the file was a contact—a linguistics and mythology expert. The file didn’t give a reason for the link, but it listed Zarita’s name. When I—” He sighed before drawing in another deep breath. “After I’d decided to find out more about you, it made sense to follow the lead. I didn’t know how she was connected to your parents at the time, I swear, but I did hope that she could help with the legends of the sunbird.”
“Will this trail of death ever end?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered in a solemn whisper.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
WE FLED MARSEILLE in Zarita’s car, but had no real idea where to head. All we knew was that we needed to be long gone before Zarita’s body was found and the theft of her car discovered. In a moment of shared agreement through our grief, we decided to head northwest to flee France as fast as possible. The particular direction of travel didn’t really matter; we didn’t care where the hell the road took us, we just needed to get away.
The guilt of her death still weighed heavily on me, and it was clear Clay’s thoughts had taken a similar path. He’d been the one to organize for her to give us a lift. If he hadn’t, she’d probably be alive and well in her home in Cyprus. Far from the shadow stalking me.
After driving for a number of hours, we needed to stop for gas. During the stop, Clay purchased a throw-away prepaid phone. As soon as we were on the road again, he dialed Ethan’s number.
“I don’t have long, but Evie’s definitely being tracked by a shadow person,” he said in the way of a greeting. He listened to something Ethan said. “She is. Sure.”
He handed the phone over to me, and I looked at it as if it might suddenly combust if I risked touching it. Which was possible with my current stress. Ethan had helped us out of the country, but he’d also tormented me in the car chase through Charlotte. I still wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I could trust him.
“Hello?” I asked in a tone that held little volume or warmth.
“How long have you been seeing the shadow?” His voice was rushed and urgent but little more than a whisper.
“Since Detroit.”
He gave a low whistle. “It’s probably close to the point of killing you then.”
Despite the whispered rush of his voice, the words rolled off his tongue with such casualness. He could have been discussing what the weather would be like next week and not my apparent impending doom.
“He could have tonight, but he didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was right next to me. He—He had a knife, but he . . .” My voice betrayed me, and I was unable to form a single word more.
Clay’s hand rested on my knee. I met his eyes briefly before he turned back to the road. The sorrow I’d found in them echoed my own. He reached for the phone.
&nb
sp; “He killed someone else instead of Evie. No, I wasn’t there. I didn’t see.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Of course I know it wasn’t. Because it wasn’t.” He sighed. “Just trust me will you?”
I clenched my fists as I guessed exactly what Ethan had asked.
“I’m going to put you on speaker.”
He pushed the button, and then Ethan’s voice issued from the tinny speaker.
“There isn’t much about shadow people here. All I know is they are relentless and they delight in sending people into madness. If you have one on your trail, there are only two ways to be rid of it. To die or to kill it.”
“But how?” Clay said. “So far only Evie has been able to see it, and even then I think that’s only when it allows her to.”
“It—” Ethan’s voice cut off and the phone beeped.
“Fuck!” Clay growled before lifting the phone and tossing it out of the car window. “Out of minutes.”
I watched the phone sail in a graceful arch through the air before smashing against the road and shattering into tiny pieces. “Wouldn’t Ethan have tried calling back?”
Clay shook his head. “He wouldn’t risk it, and even if he did, would you want him to? It would be a trail that could lead others to know we’re in Europe.”
I nodded. It made sense, even though I wanted more than anything to know the end of Ethan’s last sentence.
“He thought I did it, didn’t he?” I asked.
“He doesn’t know what to think.”
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked. Ethan’s automatic assumption of my guilt made me think about the scene Clay had walked into. It had to look bad—worse than bad even. “Why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I what?”
“Why didn’t you think I did it?”
He frowned in confusion.
“I had her blood on me,” I whispered as the memory assaulted my mind. “I was the only one in the room. Anyone else would have assumed that I’d done it.”
Without looking at me, he reached his hand to my cheek and brushed it gently. “For the same reason I know you didn’t kill that nurse, or the boy and his mother.”
Tears filled my eyes again. “How can you have so much faith in me?”
“How can you have so little in me?”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but I had no response. I couldn’t find the words to reassure him it wasn’t a lack of faith that had led me to ask the question.
He looked over to me again and offered me a small, sad smile. “I didn’t mean it like that. We’ve just got to stick together and have faith in each other, that’s all.”
I brushed away my tears and nodded.
“Try to get some sleep,” he murmured.
“You need to sleep too.”
He shook his head and buried his fingers deep into his mahogany locks. “Not until we’re out of France.”
“I can drive too.”
“I know,” he said, but didn’t make any move to let me.
Still curled into a ball on the seat, the exhaustion of every one of the days and weeks since my reunion with Clay weighed down on my eyelids, dragging them closed even as I struggled to stay awake.
“HEY THERE, sleeping beauty, it’s time to wake up.”
The light of the sun through the windshield flittered across my eyes as Clay’s voice pulled me from my sleep.
“Where are we?” I asked with a sleep-strained voice as I lifted my head from the seat and tried to figure out our location based on what was just outside the car window. Only it looked more like we’d driven into a fairytale than any real location.
“We’re in Germany. I’ve found somewhere for us to stay for a night or two.” He held up a set of keys, jingling them before closing his palm around them. “It’s a small two-bedroom, but we’re here alone. It’s off the beaten track, so I don’t think anyone will find us.”
“How heavily did I sleep?” I wondered. How had Clay organized a house while I rested?
He stroked my hair gently. “You needed it after the last twenty-four hours.”
I reached my hand forward to brush along the heavy black rings around his eyes. “You need sleep too.”
He nodded. “We’ll have to ditch the car before we move on, but I think I can risk getting some shut-eye first.”
“There’s no think about it, you’ll be resting before we go anywhere else. Even if I have to make you.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Yes ma’am.”
“That’s more like it. Now, if you don’t want us to take the car when we leave, I should probably take care of it while you head inside.” I held out my hand for the key.
His eyes widened. “No!” he cried. He reached for my hands and wrapped his fingers around mine. “You can’t go anywhere alone. Not now.”
“Clay—”
“Evie, please?” he pleaded as his fingers squeezed mine. “I can’t have you go anywhere right now but inside with me.” He held my hands so tightly it was as if he wanted to wrap me up and never let me go.
“I’ll be okay.”
“We can get rid of the car together, later.”
I sighed. Even though the holiday house was set back from the road and fronted by trees that stretched on for what seemed like forever into the sky, I thought that leaving the stolen car parked out front was a danger. When I glanced at Clay though, I saw that he needed me with him. I also couldn’t entirely blame him for his reluctance to leave me alone after Zarita’s death and the confirmation I had a supernatural stalker.
I nodded. “Okay.”
He visibly sagged in relief. “Thank you.”
It wasn’t long before I realized that Clay was far more tired than he was letting on. He wandered into the house practically dead on his feet. I guided him into the shower, where he rested his head against my shoulder and drifted between consciousness and sleep. I helped him sluice away the worst of the grime in his hair and beard before helping him into the bed. He didn’t even notice that I didn’t climb in beside him. Within minutes, his soft snoring confirmed that he was getting the sleep he needed after being awake for almost two whole days.
Throwing on a fresh outfit, I grabbed our bloodstained clothes before tossing them into a metal trashcan I found in the kitchen. I headed out the back door and tossed a handful of kindling on top of the clothes and then buried my fingers into the depths and forced a spark into my hand. Almost instantly, the fire took hold, so I placed the trashcan on the ground and turned to head back inside.
Before I’d even reached the door, a presence watching me from the depths of the forest made itself known. I couldn’t see him, but I’d experienced the tingling that crept along my spine like icy fingers often enough to know that the shadow was nearby. He’d found us already.
Pretending not to notice him, I continued through the door before turning and locking it behind me. It hadn’t helped at Zarita’s house, but it made me feel marginally better. I raced to the bedroom where Clay had left his handgun on the bedside table. I skidded into the room and then stopped at the sight of Clay fast asleep on the bed. My heart ached at how innocent and young he appeared in slumber. On seeing his peaceful, resting face, I no longer wanted to just defend myself if the shadow broke in. I wanted to stop the asshole from having the chance to hurt Clay. If the shadow thought he could intrude on us here—if he thought he could get to Clay the way he’d gotten to Zarita—I would teach him a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget.
I grabbed the gun and flicked off the safety before checking it was loaded. My fingers trembled so much that I almost dropped the magazine. With a shaky breath and one last look at Clay, I headed to go outside again.
Pushing the door open, I scanned the backyard before shifting my gaze to the end of the forest. Worried that I was maybe making the biggest mistake of my life, but knowing I didn’t really have much of a choice, I risked one more glance back at the house. Once I’d reminded myself that Clay was inside, that he was the
reason I was willing to do this, I took a step toward the forest. The feeling of a watchful gaze raking my body crept across the back of my neck again, and I moved my finger to rest beside the trigger. It had been years since Dad had taught me to shoot, but it was coming back to me fast with the weapon in hand.
“I’m here!” I called out hoping it would be loud enough to gain the shadow’s attention without waking Clay. “If you’re going to attack me, just come at me already!”
A rustling wind whipped around me, and I almost dropped the gun but was able to hold tightly to the handle regardless of my shaking fingers.
“At least show yourself, you coward!” I taunted at the empty air.
Underneath one of the towering fir trees, a black figure flickered in and out of existence. The man stared at me for a moment before his lips—the only feature I could see on his covered face—turned up into a grin that stretched out across his face to give him a sinister, otherworldly appearance.
He lifted his gaze and met mine and, for the first time ever, I got a good look at his features. His eyes were milky-gray and lifeless, appearing to bend the light around them as though they could absorb everything bright in the world and replace it with darkness. The loose black robes covered his body entirely, making him appear formless.
When I raised the gun, he turned and walked into the forest with a casual pace. It was as if he was declaring that he didn’t believe I posed any threat to him.
He’d underestimated me though because I wasn’t about to let him get away with everything he’d done. He’d killed a friend—someone who’d meant a lot to Clay—and he knew where we were now. If I let him disappear, he would probably continue to hunt us. I couldn’t allow him to pose any further threat to us. It had to end or Clay and I could never be free.
The beginning of an understanding over Clay’s words in defense of his family, and the deeds they’d done, seeped into me. When he’d tracked me down in Charlotte the first time, I hadn’t known about things like wendigos and shadows. I hadn’t appreciated just how dangerous others could be. Clay’s instincts were to protect people and the ones they loved.
