The Covenant of Shadows Collection

by Kade Cook

  The girls glance behind, watching the large man-boy wriggle and shift as he attempts to find a comfortable spot. “Stupid small cars,” he grumbles from the backseat, causing them to giggle at his discomfort.

  “It’s gonna be a long trip,” Rachael declares, slipping off her shoes and pulling her bare feet up to perch on the front of the dash—wiggling her toes in delight.

  “He has other options—if he wants to be on this road trip, he will have to endure it.” Gabrian smirks and shrugs her shoulders but feels just a bit guilty for saying it.

  “Hey, grumpy, pass me up a granola bar from the snack box on the floor,” Rachael hoots over her shoulder toward the backseat.

  “I can’t.”

  Rachael wrenches her tiny torso around to face him, her red locks fluttering with the wind dancing through her opened window. “And why not? They are right there,” she says, pointing down to the empty box. Her eyes rush to meet Shane’s, wide with complete perplexity. “What happened to the food?”

  Shane’s face flushes just for a second and then he grins impishly, chewing on something as he places the last empty wrapper in the garbage bag behind the seat.

  “You didn’t…” She nearly jumps over the seat to retrieve the bag. “You ate everything?”

  “Hey, I was hungry,” he explains, shrugging his shoulders. “And all that was in there was just rabbit food anyway so it didn’t take long to go through it.”

  “Huh.” Rachael huffs sliding back down into her seat, her arms locked across her chest in disgust with their backseat annoyance. “You are such an ingrate.”

  “It’s a fair trade off really, if you think about. You get to sit in comfort while I have to suffer the trip traveling in the back of a tin can, listening to girly music,” he says, making air quotes around the music style. “It is what I like to call a compromise.” Shane’s hearty chuckle resonates from the backseat, tickling their ears, but Rachael doesn’t give into to his cheeriness. Shane edges himself forward and grabs hold of Rachael’s seat for leverage. Resting his chin on the shoulder of her chair, he gazes out the windshield with them for a moment, overlooking the weathered road called Route 1. “Tell you what, the next place we come to that sells something that we can eat, we will load up for the rest of the trip—my treat,” he offers, patting the edge of her shoulder lightly with his fingers.

  Gabrian grins at the two of them, keeping her eyes focused on the road. Rachael’s grim curve in her lips softens with his gesture of truce and puckers in defiance. But they all know she will cave—it’s not in her nature to stay mad for long.

  “Fine,” she exhales, letting her arms loosen from their dead bolt position, but she raises her chin to let him know she is not done being cross with his act of gluttony. “You could have at least offered us something before you devoured it all. I am starving.”

  “Can you refrain from starving to death for another fifteen minutes?”

  “Why?”

  “Because we are nearly to Cherryfield, there is a convenience store there just after we cross the bridge.” He pats her seat again but turns his attentions to the driver. “Is that okay with you?”

  “Sure, if it will keep you two from tearing each other apart.”

  “Sweet.” Sliding his hand from Rachael’s seat over to rest on the edge of Gabrian’s, his fingers creep forward until she feels the heat of his skin upon her own. His fingertips feather out against the side of her right arm and dance lightly over her flesh, making her skin pimple. She frees one of her hands and it draws to his like a magnet, cupping his fingers gently within her own. Leaning his head nearer, he tugs at the tips of her fingers until they rest upon the fullness of his lips. Just for a moment he holds them there before setting them free again.

  Dragging his head back across the top of the ceiling, resting awkwardly in the middle of the backseat, he smiles at her through the rear-view mirror. His eyes call to her and touch the center of her soul from deep within their sea of green serenity. The warm early morning sun gleams in through the side window, basking happily against his caramel-coloured skin, making him almost shimmer as if he had somehow manifested his own kind of aura. But she knows better. The Schaeduwe do not exude their energy like everyone else, which makes it easier for her to be around him compared to everyone else, and she thanks the gods for this exception—especially of late.

  With all the discussion of food and eating, Gabrian’s own hunger pangs are awakening, but not for what she had hoped for. Normally she can contain her cravings and subdue them with the bitter exchange of necessary bland energy strands taken here and there, but Rachael’s iridescent life force that always flares like a beacon in the night is quite flamboyant and noticeable today—awareness of it is more than Gabrian likes. The sweet fragrance dances all around her friend—a strand of essence wafts so close that Gabrian is unable to avoid inhaling it. The pangs of desire cause her to bite down and chew at the side of her cheek just to keep from losing control and give in to the desire to truly taste it.

  Maybe it is because they are all trapped together in close quarters or maybe it is her lust to scratch at a forbidden itch that begs to consume her thoughts. She does not know. All she is certain of is she needs to get out of the car for a minute and away from the light to get a hold of herself.

  Cutting her breath off before she can inhale any more rogue fragments of life, Gabrian’s eyes rip away from Shane’s gaze and quickly finds the window button on the door. Pressing it hard, she rolls down the glass between her and the outside world. The instant push of wind washes through the car, carrying away some of the tempting aromas along with it. Keeping her face close to the open window, she begins to breathe again, returning her focus back to the road, and hopes for a new distraction—any distraction.

  Rachael is right. This is going to be a long trip.

  25

  OFF TO THE GREAT WHITE NORTH

  “There it is.”

  “There what is?”

  “The Eastcoast Convenience store. Ta da!” Shane shouts from the backseat, pointing at the little white building with the yellow business sign on the front. It is just as he said, perched on the side of the road just after they crossed the little bridge on Route 1 through Cherryfield.

  “Finally,” Gabrian expels, whipping the steering wheel to the right, and bursts out of the vehicle as soon as she places it into park—leaving the door wide open behind her—and begins to tread around in wide circles with her hands tucked into her hair, loosely tied up into a messy bun upon her head. She turns her face up into the sun and pulls in deeply at the uninfected air around her, transfixed in an aimless course.

  Shane and Rachael climb out of the small green bug they had been squished into and stand idly, watching Gabrian pace wildly, oblivious to their stares.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Shane asks, looking down at Rachael who crooks her face at him, just as confused as he by Gabrian’s odd behavior.

  Gabrian’s mind is too busy to hear anything—all her attention clamors to calm her inner most desires to quench the hunger beneath. Her grey aura sways and twitches violently around her as she searches for the voice that lingers from time to time within her soul, the one that tells her everything will be fine.

  And it will be. She is better than this, she tells herself. She just needs to find it. Her mind goes on a rampage of collecting—confining any and all thoughts of how tantalizing Rachael’s life force smells and how savory the little strand of white light had tasted. Stuffing it deep within the dark, shrouded places of her mind, Gabrian smothers it with the coherency that she just needs to ignore her body’s yearnings—to do what is right, not what is instinctual.

  “Gabrian, what’s going on?” Shane hoots at her, a little louder than before.

  Hearing Shane’s voice finally resonates within her consciousness. Gabrian halts her drifted march and stares blankly at them for a moment, realizing how strange she must look to her crew. “Ah, I guess that must have seemed weird.” She forces her lips
to curl upward in a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “I think I am just getting nervous about going to Canada and figuring out what is going on with me—and working with another Elder I don’t know.”

  The folds in Shane’s cheeks crease with his immediate relief in her words. The thought had crossed his mind that she was having some type of physical issues as her eyes had changed in the mirror while he was looking at her. For a moment, he could have sworn her pupils were dilating, which would be fine, but they were driving into the sun—dilation is not something that would be considered a normal reaction—but then again, nothing about this trip is normal and for that matter, neither is Gabrian.

  “Don’t worry so much. Ashen is great. I really wouldn’t let her being an Elder bother you. Trust me on that.” Shane gives her a wink and arches his back, raising his large arms up over the top of his head. Clasping his fingers together, he extends his reach backwards—growing larger by the second as he tries to pull out the stiffness festering within his muscles. She can hear the sound of his internals snapping and popping as he pulls and stretches—a condition that Gabrian is certain was caused from him being bunched up for so long in the backseat. The makers of her beetle bug probably weren’t considering the comfort of a large Schaeduwe in the back when they designed it.

  She and Rachael both stare at him with pursed lips at his somewhat exaggerated display of discomfort until Rachael’s microscopic moment of sympathy for him evaporates. “All right, tough guy, dig out your moneybags and buy us some food,” Rachael commands, tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. “I am hungry.”

  Shane’s folded hands drop to rest at the back of his neck and cradles in tightly against his mess of half-curled locks as he grins and surveys the parking lot. He starts to move forward, releasing his hands from their hold, and marches quickly toward the store. Gabrian and Rachael shut the doors on the bug and follow his lead. In front of the store, Shane bends down and snags up a handful of weeds growing inconspicuously by the edge of the building and turns abruptly to face the girls.

  “Here you go, Rach,” Shane says, lifting the bundle in her direction. “Breakfast is served.” He chortles out barely able to contain himself, quite pleased of his attempt at humour. “This should do you till we reach the border, right?”

  “Ha, ha, very funny. Pick On Vegans Day, is it?” Rachael pushes past Shane and lands a punch to his stomach on the way by. “Jerk.”

  Shane hunches over and grabs at his stomach where her tiny fist landed and pretends his defeat by groaning loudly, still sporting his grin. “What? Wrong flavour?”

  Gabrian does not even try to fight the smile growing on her face. Leave it to them to find a way to break through the seriousness of her inner turmoil and find a way to make her smile. She follows Rachael into the store and rubs Shane’s mock injury on the way by. “Now play nice or I will put you both in the backseat for punishment.”

  Shane’s grin wavers, only for a moment, as he tries to be serious, waving his hands up in the air in surrender to her threats with the hope that she is kidding.

  Miles away from Cherryfield, and the East Coast Convenience Store, the wind flirts with her senses as it whisks in around her through the window. It flails her long dark hair wildly about her face and surrenders the salty and sweet scents carried in from the ocean nearby as they tour the coastal route northward.

  Having taken sympathy on her oversized guardian, she switches seats with him and lets him take the wheel on the condition that they leave the windows down—an unspoken attempt to obscure the delicious flavour of Rachael’s light that had nearly driven her crazy earlier. Although Rachael contests the switch for a moment, she concedes with the quick bribery of allowing her to pick any place on their journey and explain the significance of it to Gabrian.

  It was an easy and necessary fix.

  And this way, Gabrian can sit quietly in the background, listening to the sarcastic banter of blooming comradery between the two most important people in her life while she breathes in the diluted oxygen needed to keep her head straight. She did manage to feed on the bitter tasting stress ball of the store clerk but she still cannot subdue the claws always there beneath the surface.

  The trio manages to pass through the Canadian border at Calais, Maine without a hitch. With Rachael’s uncanny ability to win over nearly anyone’s attention—well, except for Shane’s and come to think of it, Thomas’s as well—Officer O’Keefe of the border patrol nearly forgot to ask for their passports on entry into the country. But Gabrian wonders if her continual internal chanting to let them pass was somewhat of an influence as well. She chuckles at the absurdity of a Shadow Walker actually owning a passport considering that in a moment’s notice they can appear anywhere on the planet that casts a shadow.

  As the miles pass, Gabrian gazes out the small side window and notices the landscape change ever-so-slightly. The greenery draped along the roadside becomes a bit more plush and abundant—the trees swallowing them up as they drive along the routes through the lower part of the province of New Brunswick. Even the cities pass quickly unless they make an effort to notice them, get lost or take the wrong exit as Shane had, nearing the city of Saint John. But with only few snide comments from the shadowy driver toward his red-headed tour guide, and some quick recalculations by her GPS, they are back on the right path—only losing a few moments of daylight.

  Only four pit stops on their journey to the Canadian east coast interrupts Gabrian’s daydreaming. She spends most of the trip staring out the window, trying to envision what is in store from her latest gift development, and preparing herself for what kind of world she is going to have to endure once they get to where they are going.

  Rounding their way past the Moncton exits and heading straight for a place called Shediac—or so the large green sign stated—Gabrian’s anxiety begins to whirl from the closeness of their expected arrival. The hours she had dreaded spending in the car had somehow vanished, leaving her with nothing more than mere minutes until her next destination point. Since she is going to the dwellings of the Elder of the Isa Fellowship, the Fellowship of Ice, her mind wanders—manifesting a certain childish fabrication of an image of where the Elder must live. She cannot help but envision a desolate wasteland, surrounded by unyielding layers of snow or at least a house partially made of ice. But as ridiculous as that seems, the air coming through the open window noticeably drops a few degrees the closer they get.

  Rachael’s eager anticipation of the trip’s end begins to bubble to the surface. She turns her torso to face the back in order to relay her knowledge of the small coastal town to Gabrian. She had spent one of her past lives there—living to the ripe old age of eighty-nine—but as soon as her lips part to unleash all that she knows, the colour of her irises begins to change, a streak of royal blue bleeding outward from the innards of her ebony pupils, layering her summer green with a highlighted hue. Her voice doesn’t sound. There is only an open-jawed silence as the inner conversation between Rachael and the mage connecting with her takes place.

  Gabrian recalls becoming highly annoyed with her friend in her times of ‘spacing out’ when they were younger, when she lived in the ignorant bliss where they were all just humans. But her tolerance is quite lenient now that she is enlightened in the way the world really works around her and the petty annoyances no longer have validity, although she still thinks Rachael does have her legitimate moments from time to time—mostly when it is convenient for her.

  With a few blinks of her long black lashes, the colour in Rachael’s eyes returns to her normal green hue and her mouth promptly closes only to open again with words of a different message. “Ashen, is wondering how close we are to arriving into Shediac.” She shifts her twisted torso into a less abnormal pose and directs the next part of the message to Shane. “She says to take the Shediac exit then drive straight through town until we reach the giant lobster. Broghen will be there to meet us.”

  The creases around Shane’s eyes deep
en in his immediate pleasure, while Rachael spins back around, instantly grinning from the growing furrow in Gabrian’s brow. “Ah, giant lobster?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not real.” Rachael laughs and returns her back to press straight against the seat. “It’s a fishing town just like towns back in Northeast. They have a large monument in the shape of a lobster that is sort of a renowned landmark. I saw somewhere in a tourist guide that it’s a must do when visiting here. People love going there to have their pictures taken with it—even wedding parties go there to include it in their wedding photos.” She twists back around suddenly to face Gabrian with wide eyes and a cheesy grin. “Hey, remind me to dig out the camera when we get there.”

  Gabrian rolls her eyes at Rachael’s exuberant grin and lets her eyes drift back toward the blur of passing trees as they reach the exit—following Ashen’s directions. The town is just as small and sleepy as Northeast—the similar quietness of it is reassuring to her although the thoughts of being able to get lost within the concrete and steel buildings does have a certain draw to it as well. But country it was, so country it is. Probably best for all parties involved until she updates her knowledge of how dangerous having the gift of ice truly is to avoid any unnecessary casualties due to her lack of know-how and control.

  Passing by the local stores and reading names she has never heard of before, Gabrian thinks how funny just a few miles and a border can make to the familiarity of what she assumes were major company names. Her mind collects the prospect of possibly enjoying her trip just to take in a different strand of life’s cultures. She catches sight of two RV campgrounds right in the middle of town and laughs at the oddity of it, but then understands why they are all crowded together in a cluster once she sees the water open up along the edges of each one. It seems people don’t mind being crammed into small spaces as long as the view is nice—as much can be said for any place, she supposes thinking of Manhattan—as long as they are happy.