Shadow Games

by Girl, Breukelen

  “Oh, Miss Phoenix. You can’t blame Tarin. He is after all, a demon and they’re generally not known for being all that trust worthy. Besides, I did make a rather persuasive argument for killing you.”

  I saw Tarin drop his head down. “What did she threaten you with?” I asked him.

  “Katelyn, believe me, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have to.”

  “Oh that’s rich.” I muttered back at him.

  The woman laughed lightly at our bickering. “And he had to young one. Because he owed a debit to me and I always collect my debits, don’t I Tarin?” I glanced from her back to Tarin. I could see the emotions of pain shift across his face as he tried to shut down and mask them. Inside me I felt the whirl of pain and emotion rise up in me and I knew Asha was trying to tell me something about why he’d done what he’d done. But I shut her down, part of me didn’t want to know. At least not from second hand opinion.

  “And everyone knows, the only way to capture a unicorn is to present him with a virgin offering of great value.”

  I switched to looking back at the vampire female. “But I’m not a virgin. Uh, hello, I’m a prostitute, hooker, street walker, good time girl, floozy, jezebel... About as tainted goods as I could possibly be.” Not to mention how Tarin had tried to kill me during sex with him. “So you’re plan is completely flawed.”

  “Young one, if my plan was completely flawed, Arlow,” She said pointing to him, as he remained silent but hyper alert and ready. “Wouldn’t have come after you with the greatest sense of duty only, one of his kind can have. Besides, it’s not you he’s trying to protect, it’s the truth-sayer you possess and everyone knows, real truth-sayers, are virgins because of their gift, they can’t so to speak, do it. Only the gods are so lustful that they plant their damn seeds everywhere.”

  I looked across at Arlow, unsure of what to say. Asha was the virgin and that was who he was attracted to. Some incorporeal being that resided in my physicality. My body. How could that be right, maybe the vampire didn’t know everything she thought she did about truth-sayers, after all how could asha be a virgin if I wasn’t and we shared the same body? “Is it true?”

  Arlow nodded his head. “I’m drawn to others of the truth, my sense of duty for your Asha Vihistia, is greater than sex and lust. It is a true form of love.”

  “A true form of love.” I muttered softly to myself. I looked around from Arlow to the vampire and Tarin, the guards surrounding us. I was suddenly very annoyed at all of them. “True love isn’t killing someone, it isn’t capturing them and forcing them to your will,” I saw Tarin flinch “It isn’t attempting to protect them by further endangering them, it isn’t whatever you think this is.” I said waving my bound hands around.

  “Then what is it young one?” The vampire asked me.

  “It’s loosing yourself to everything.” I replied and let my eyes flutter backwards into my head. I started to fall down, but hands caught me. Tarin caught me and Asha was the one who glanced back up at him giving a slight nod as he helped her up.

  13

  I remembered walking into my family home after school one afternoon. Dropped my school bag on the floor inside the front door and headed straight to the kitchen. I was hungry. I wanted to eat. I was always hungry, I was a growing kid. I was fourteen.

  I had always known there was something different about me. Something unique, I felt it. Like certainty within me. But I had no idea what this thing, that caused my feeling of it, to be. Maybe I was developing an ego. Maybe I was becoming aware of myself as a person, that caused this feeling. Maybe it was just what you felt when you were a teenager. I didn’t know, because nobody had ever told me what might be within me. Nobody had ever sat me down and told me I truly was different from the other kids.

  There were people in the kitchen it was crowded, and everyone stilled when I stepped in. There were rough looking men in there, with knives and guns and they were holding them, pointing them at my parents. My parents looked frightened; the men with the weapons looked mean and angry. And I knew in an instant, there would be trouble. More than what had already transpired in my absence.

  I don’t know if my parents even knew what I was. Later on I would think it was pure denial that had kept them from talking to me, telling me that I was a chosen vessel for the truth-sayer line. But the truth is, they may not have known at all. They may never had known what I contained within me, if I hadn’t lost control that afternoon.

  I froze on the spot and the men with the weapons, their faces directed with anger, looked at me. Stared at my arrival. I had no idea what was happening, but enough sense to know it was bad, very bad and that it would get worse. There was no sense that I should run in fear from them. And no one yelled at me to do that. There was just the feeling of dread and fear and anger in that room. And how my appearance as unexpected as it was, had stopped time for a few brief seconds in there. For a moment, I actually thought I’d frozen everyone in time. Because there was absolutely no movement, no sound, from any of the people in that room.

  But there were eyes on me, bodies and weapons focused on my parents, but eyes on me. The intensity of what they felt and would do to all of us given a chance, I saw it in their gaze. It was like a premonition played out before me in fast-forward before being zapped away again. And that’s when I felt it, a click inside me. Something shifted in my heartbeat and that’s when I blacked out and all hell broke loose.

  I awoke on the floor of the kitchen dazed. At first I thought I’d fainted. But then I looked around me. I wasn’t the only one down. There were bodies, body parts, bits of bodies, all around me. There was blood, bloodshed everywhere, and bits of meat, it looked like meat. My mother was cowering on the ground, behind a chair, staring wide eyed at me. Her mouth trembling and gapping opening and making some kind of frightened noise. My father was also far away from he. He too looked at me like I was something to be very afraid of.

  I said nothing. What was I supposed to say? I had no idea what had just happened. But clearly my parents did. The looks on their faces told me they did, even if they didn’t say they did.

  Things got sorted out after that. The police were called, I heard some chatter as they moved and stood around, bending down and examining patterns of blood and torn body parts about a drug deal gone wrong and the family being targeted and the dealers must’ve been high on their own product.

  My parents didn’t speak to me for a week. Didn’t look at me. They left food on the kitchen table for me when they weren’t around. They avoided me when I moved around in the house. I was sent to a child psychologist after the event. I only got one visit in. I didn’t talk at it. There didn’t seem to be a point.

  In the second week, after the event, my mother finally spoke to me. “You have to leave. You have a demon inside of you. You’re evil.” Was all she said.

  Later that day a lady from Human Services came along to collect me. I had a bag of clothes packed. I was put into the foster care system until I was eighteen years old. I never saw my parents or family home after that.

  That was my first introduction to what I really was.

  14

  Katelyn was right. Love was loss of control and just feeling everything around you, within you. It was akin to what we experienced sharing the same body bound by the limitations of our relationship. I was barely half way up to standing when I changed my leg stance, ever so slightly.

  I busted the cable ties around my wrists and darted across at the guards at the back of the room, to the left, Tarin darted to the right in front of me, we both moved at exactly the same time. It all happened so damn fast, it was like unleashing a hunger of anger in me. Tarin disappeared into the shadows of the room, unseen and I ripped bodies apart as sounds echoed of the haunted walls around the room.

  “Get his knife!” The vampire screamed at her guards pointing to Arlow, but it was to no avail. “Get the knife!”

  Chaos ensued, because Katelyn had known it was the only damn way, she would get
out of the situation at hand. And I was the only one next to Arlow in the room, powerful enough to do damage in a blink and you’ve almost missed it kind of speed. I was specific and efficient in my directed anger. Luckily for me, I’d had a lot of time to wait to do this again. And it was a skill I rather excelled at.

  That was the beauty of a vessel like Katelyn, we worked so well as a team. It was like a natural rhythm between us. Although every time I awoke and arose, it felt like I needed to do more than stretch my legs and iron out the kinks in me. I was beginning to think it was time for me and Katelyn to renegotiate play time though. I did so like being out and about in the big wide world again. Especially when I got to erupt forth into it, bathing in my own magnificent power.

  I looked down at the knife in Arlow’s hand, why was the vampire so damn interested in it? My eyes lingered longer than they should have when I had the chance over the ceremonial handle of the knife. There was something to it, that was sure, it looked amazing, too ornate. It didn’t suit the rest of him. So it had to mean something. Like something you would wear or carry with pride, like an emblem a crest on a shield. The knife’s handle was black, but looked like ivy that faded down to grey and darker and there my keen eyesight could make out markings, carvings on it.

  “Get the knife!” The vamp woman screamed again. “It’s the source of his power!” I noticed the second his fingers wrapped tighter around the knife. Of course it was! I barely had time to realize the significance of the knife when another attacker launched themself at me.

  The knife handle, it was part of Arlow. It was his unicorn horn that he could not show, in human form. It was all of his power, which he had to safeguard against from everyone. Because without the horn, what did that mean for him? Would he die? Or just cease to exist? I threw the attacker out of my way with annoyance. Maybe Arlow without the horn would only be a man, never to be a unicorn again. Damned for an eternity, as human if he failed at his life’s purpose, to protect and serve me.

  Protect and serve the Asha Vahisita, could that be right? Where had that thought come from? Was it something I’d been told once before? My life blurred so much when it was contained in a human vessel, it was like loosing bits of my memory and keeping all of Katelyn’s. That didn’t seem right either, again, maybe it had something to do with Tarin binding us to him and screwing up the unique, relationship of vessel and being in a paranormal world.

  My eyes flittered over the vampire woman who was trying to get towards Arlow and the knife. Just how much power was in that thing? How truly powerful were unicorns? I’d never really been informed about them. Probably as an Asha Vahisita it was out of a sense of protection, or keeping our boundaries and relationships with Unicorns, pure. I’d had that much said at me in my lifetime’s teachings, the purer the being, the stronger the power. Purity equated to sex in the ancient world I was bore out of. A world before technology when magic, blood and beings, were what made power happen.

  I knew I couldn’t let the vampire get a hold of Arlow’s knife.

  15

  The fighting didn’t last all that long. Bodies fell, blood spilled, splattered and was everywhere. At the end of it all, there were few left standing, a few retreating straggling and a few moaning in pain. The vampire had fled in the confusion of events. Arlow was standing but had blood stains on his arms, his clothes, his neck, his legs. Tarin stood slowly, panting heavily nearby. He looked rather beaten up and bloody too. Half his face was swollen. Can’t say I didn’t like the look on him, especially since it looked like it hurt a hell of a lot.

  So it was somewhat of a shock to the system when I looked down at myself. I really shouldn’t have. Blood seeped out of my chest and legs, which suddenly gave out underneath me, and I buckled to the ground.

  I could feel the intrusion of the two bullets inside of Katelyn’s body. It felt like it melded from her to me. But that was impossible because I was essentially incorporeal, just renting space in her body. So surely I shouldn’t be able to feel such physical violence on me.

  Was there a gun? Who had a gun? When had I got shot? I looked at Tarin and pointed at him “This is your fault.”

  It had to be something to do with the binding Tarin had enforced on Katelyn and therefore, me. It was messing things up between the two of us. My hand slammed down onto the broken glass on the floor before me. The sensation of pain again filled me. How was it possible I was feeling so much from Katelyn’s vessel. Was she just weak? Mentally strong by physically weak and fragile? No that couldn’t be right. Because part of me knew, that my presence in her, helped her be physically stronger than she would normally be. I helped her live through things like this. I had kept her alive when Tarin had tried to kill her. Something was wrong, very wrong between us.

  “Asha Vahisita.” Arlow spoke, running towards me as my knees hit the ground. Humans, they are so damn delicate, they look like they’re made of tough being, but it’s all a finely tuned balanced body and it really doesn’t take much violence to kill. Even less to break someone. After all, being a truth-sayer had limited abilities whilst incorporeal form. There was only so much I could do in my human host, Katelyn’s body. Defying bullets was not one of those things.

  I saw Tarin’s eyes on me. A look of surprise in them before they narrowed on me and sharpened with anger. I doubted he would ever look at Katelyn that way. Not that I’d ever know.

  “You let her die and I’ll fuck up your incorporeal after life so god damn hard you’ll wish you never existed.”

  The room spun for a moment and I fell, arms grabbed for me, it wasn’t Tarin who was still standing over me. “I can help her, but we have to move her.” Arlow was saying to Tarin. “Please,” I heard him beg. “Help me save the Asha Vahisita, you have no idea how important she is.”

  “I don’t care about Asha if you can’t save Katelyn.”

  “Help me move her. We need to take her to my refuge.” Arlow said sliding his arms under my armpits. “I can save her, but I need to get her to my refuge to do it.” Spots danced in front of my eyes and I felt the pull of unconsciousness coming on. I didn’t want to take Tarin Armadel as my last conscious thought into death, but the world as I knew it, went black before I could do anything more about it or him.

  16

  A dreamless state, doesn’t make sense. I mean, how would you know, you were in a dreamless state if some part of you wasn’t conscious of the fact. And if you’re conscious of the fact on some level, then you’re likely to believe and think you’re in a dream, and you’re likely to start thinking things that will spur a dream induced state on. This is what the real estate in my head is like, when shared with an truth sayer. Most of the time, it’s just me. I’m in control and I get to pull the strings. But then there have been times, when it’s apparent, that Asha, has let me be in control. Asha is patient and smart on a level that alerts me to be aware of how much I use her, and interact with her.

  My eyes felt heavy and drugged as I slowly opened them. The world around me blurred into focus. “Where am I?” It’s a dumb question, but one that needed answering because I’d never been so out of control of my life before, because Asha hasn’t had so much breathing room in my life, as I’ve given her in the past few days. Not since I was fourteen. I needed to regain some sense of control here.

  I blinked quickly and Tarin came into focus. Tarin. He was hunched up over himself beside me, his arm drapped over me. I didn’t get him. I began to move, trying to push myself upright and Tarin stirred awake. A black man dressed like he was ready for a rock and roll concert, walked into the room and stomped his feet heavily. For some reason it reminded me of how a horse would stomp it’s hoves. Then I rememberd, Arlow, Arlow the unicorn. Unicorns and shadow demons, what the fuck had become of my world? What had I gotten into here? And what the fuck had happened to me? I’d never felt so fucking tenderized before in my whole life.

  Arlow looked at me. “How do you feel?” Tarin asked letting his arm drop off me as we both pushed up into a more sit
ting upright position.

  “Fine.” I muttered glancing at him. Lying completely. I was still rather shady on how I felt about him and whether I should feel anything for him.

  “No you don’t.” He replied back at me. “I had hoped I’d done enough to minimize any pain you’re feeling.”

  “What happened?” Arlow looked from me straight at Tarin.

  “Hey!” I snapped at him. “I’m right here. So don’t try and treat me like I’m not. I asked you not him, and you Unicorn answer to me, truth sayer!” I saw Tarin nod his head slowly back at Arlow from the corner of my eye. Jesus, the gallantry, the over protection. Like I of all people, needed it, what overkill and annoyance.

  “You were shot, multiple times.” Arlow finally answered me causing my eyebrows to shoot up in surprise quickly.

  That’d be why my insides felt like squashed ham and jelly with a dose of pain for good measure. Small sensations of it ebbed around my chest and the front of my legs, my quadriceps hurt and felt weak even with what little movement I’d felt sitting upright.

  “Oh.” I glanced around me then. We were no longer at the trashed room I’d first met Arlow in and the vampire bitch and her gang of thugs had shown up to fuck with us. I wanted to shake my head and clear it, too much was happening, far too fast and I hadn’t even been around for half of it. I frowned, trying to remember, to recall through Asha’s mindset what had gone down.

  I’d never really explored my relationship with my Asha Vahisita all that much. I hadn’t ever felt that would be a good thing to do. No real reasoning behind it than a bad, bad feeling of instinct. But I remembered things when Asha was in front and I feed her part of my memory.

  “Katelyn?” Tarin asked unfurling and sliding across the floor, closer to the mattress I was on.

  Like general knowledge on the world around us, that she was not otherwise familiar with. It was fractured somewhat, but I could grasp bits of it afterwards, sometimes peace things together. So it occurred to me if I could do that as the passenger in my own body when giving myself over to Asha, then perhaps she could do the same when I was in the driver seat. Or more correctly, I could make her, since it was my body we shared and my will alone that held or freed her in me.