In The Dark

by Sarah K. Jensen

  Laif looked as if he were on a roller coaster ready to crash. Oh, boy, she thought, this is going to get bad before it gets better. Finding one’s soulmate rarely went smoothly. All she could do at this point was to offer comfort.

  “Baby,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers, “we have great doctors here. They will do everything they can. And she doesn’t have many scars. Certainly, she would have more if she didn’t heal fast. Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it if we have to.” When his left brow rose, she added, “No sense in borrowing trouble. We have enough. Wait and see what happens.” But she knew how difficult waiting was, and her son wasn’t always patient.

  He took a deep breath and seemed to settle down somewhat. Of course, it could be a backlash from the adrenaline high he’d gone through. She thought she’d keep things light for now, so she asked, “Where did you find her? I thought you weren’t going to see her again.”

  The intensity was back as if it had never left. “I called her. She just burrowed straight into my mind and wouldn’t go away, so I figured I’d see what it meant.”

  “And what do you think it means?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.” Aggravated, he stood again, turning his back on her. “It’s crazy. Stupid really.”

  Sitting back to watch, Lydia asked, “What is?”

  Laif spun around, his hand waving through the air. “This. Me. Her.” He dropped his hands to his side and just stood there, breathing hard and staring at Lydia as if she had the answers he was searching for. When she didn’t speak, he fisted his hands and set them on his hips. “Don’t you think it’s a little crazy to see a girl and think, mine? Like she belongs to me or something? Who does that?”

  Lydia laughed. “Your father.”

  Laif shook his head. “This is different.”

  Still smiling, Lydia stood. “Is it?” She took Laif’s hands and straightened his fingers, rubbing them out. “Your father announced the second time I’d seen him that I was to stay away from any and all male friends I had. On our first date, though why I agreed to go out with him after that announcement is beyond me, he told me I was his and that I—”

  Laif snorted. He’d heard this all before, all her children had. She’d gone out with Reagan because she’d known he was hers too. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it at the time.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “that I was going to marry him. Didn’t matter how long it took to convince me. I thought he was crazy.”

  She’d fought Regan at every turn until she couldn’t deny any longer that she loved the man, even though he infuriated her more than anyone ever had. It took months still for Regan to convince Lydia to marry him and accept the strange life he lived when he wasn’t drawing buildings. She smiled and said, “He didn’t give up, thank Heavens.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t throw you on his parents’ floor the first time you met,” Laif said with no small amount of self-disgust.

  “True,” Lydia said, still smiling. “But at least you don’t have the problem of convincing her demons are real or that you go out at night and fight them.”

  He nodded. “No, I get the feeling she’s no stranger to this life. But if she thinks I’m going to let her continue—”

  Lydia silenced him with a glare. “I wouldn’t finish that if I were you. First, you hardly know anything about her. And second —” she took his cheeks between her hands “—I bet she’s very good at it. Her griffin is larger than your dragon, and she can’t be more than twenty-five.”

  Laif snarled. “Like that matters.”

  “We’ll see. Let’s talk about where you were when she was shot and what you were both doing. Maybe we can get some answers ready for your dad and Bryson before they get here.”

  Laif took in the sleeping woman as he entered the room crammed with beeping and hissing machines. The scent of sickness lessened as he stepped into Memphis’s room. Her eyes and cheeks were shadowed and her skin a sickly grey. Feeling a little lost and a lot confused, he took her hand and sat in the straight-back, blue vinyl chair and bowed his head. The prayer he mumbled brought little peace, but he hoped she’d hear it and find some comfort.

  One thing bothered him now that he knew she’d make it. Where were her loved ones? Tiegan had gone to her place of work and found the man who lived over the shop. Her boss, Shane Evans.

  Tiegan said the man had been drinking and was almost inconsolable when he told him about Memphis. Tiegan tried to get her family contact info, but Shane said there wasn’t much in the way of family and he’d promised he’d contact those who needed to know what had happened. Tiegan couldn’t get so much as a name out of the man. Regardless, shouldn’t someone have shown up by now?

  Some monster had shot her and left her to die. He could take care of everything if he only knew who had hurt Memphis.

  A cackle behind Laif gave him the answer. A snarl came to his lips and he stared down two demon-shadows crouched in the corner of the hospital room. Two he had grown very familiar with over the last fifteen years. Black eyebrows arched over eyes pitch as night and high, sunken cheekbones left the face of Kyrell looking sallow, evil.

  “So, the two Guardians meet,” Kyrell smirked. “How romantic.” His voice oozed sarcasm, nauseating Laif with fear and anger.

  Instinctively, Laif grappled for the bag of white desert sand he kept on him at all times. The sand’s properties were discovered centuries before by the Navaho people when the Night Shadows would not cross the white sand to get to their prey. Later, a Navaho Shaman learned that a small handful could send Shadows back to the underworld, at least for a time. That was the only known protection the world had from the Night Shadows. Laif’s sand had been blessed by a friend of his father’s, Born Elk, a Navajo Medicine Man.

  “You require no answers?” Kyrell asked in a mocking tone.

  With a snort, Laif edged closer and asked, “Are you offering?”

  Kyrell and Vels were two of the demons who had eluded the Guardians for possibly hundreds of years. These two, Laif himself, had watched possess unsuspecting humans countless times. And he wanted them sent back to Hell in the worst way. But they were too powerful to stay there, so at least he could get information from them.

  “We will say this,” Vels smirked. “We will never be through with her. She will be ours one day soon.”

  Laif’s skin prickled with the threat and he could feel his muscles respond. Not as long as he lived, she wouldn’t. But he wanted info, so he asked, “Why? What’s she to you?”

  Kyrell’s twisted smile came slow. “Let’s say I was there from the time she was conceived. That I knew her mother… intimately.”

  The shadowy laughter turned Laif’s stomach. The two demons lunged for the closed window and Laif flicked the sand toward them, missing by mere inches.

  “Crap!” Working quickly, Laif took a handful of sand and ran it across the window’s sill; it would do no good to place any on the floor by the door, considering how many people were in and out of the room. Once done, he called home.

  “Memphis had a couple of visitors of interest,” he told his dad. At the family meeting, it was decided that until more could be determined about what exactly had taken place prior to the shooting, Memphis would have someone, namely Laif, with her at all times. Regan Craig could be very persuasive, and the head of the hospital, though reluctant to allow non-family members to sit in vigil, somehow agreed. It had also been decided that the family would do a little detective work themselves, making sure if the incident was a matter for the Guardians, they’d be able to handle it. Now Laif knew it was.

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Kyrell and Vels.”

  Laif heard the sharp intake of breath before his father swore. “What did they want?”

  “Kyrell’s following Memphis. Said he’s been there since her conception.”

  Regan Craig swore again. “I’ll have Tiegan find out all he can tonight about her family.

  “I don’t know her, Son.�
�� His father’s soft Irish lilt strengthened in frustration. “And I was under the impression that we knew all the Guardians in the United States.”

  “How in the world does Born Elk not know her?” Laif recognized the edge in his voice. The fear. The fatigue.

  “I haven’t been able to get in touch with him yet, but I’ll keep trying. We’ll find out who she is and keep her safe. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  Laif scratched the stubble on his face. “Dad?”

  “Son, we’ll figure it out.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Kyrell slithered in the shadows of the room next to Memphis’s. Did that fool really think that glittery sand would keep him away? He had so much to learn. The sand was a symbol to him, nothing more. It held only enough power to send the weak back. Those demons who had never had a body, those who had to settle for possession. But for someone like Kyrell, who had once walked this earth, those rituals and symbols were like the blows of a child’s wooden play sword to a heavily protected combatant.

  He’d stalked Memphis’s mother and even her grandmother. He’d been around for centuries, trying to prevent the children of that druid from being born. But when they were, he did his best to make sure the mothers weren’t capable of taking care of them. Of teaching them. So far, he hadn’t been able to keep all the women from learning how to fight. Memphis’s grandmother had taught her where her mother hadn’t, but it would end with Memphis. No more children. That he swore.

  Nothing and no one would keep him from this girl he’d stalked since before she’d been even a thought in her parents’ head. If he couldn’t break her, like he had her mother, then he’d kill her. He laughed to himself and remembered the stupid, fragile human.

  Nine-year-old Ruth McLoughlin sat in the crowded cafeteria at Crawfordsville Elementary. With her copper-red hair, the metal braces darkening her smile, and that pencil-thin body, she was an easy target for the picking. Those youths would not see the beauty under the surface, nor would they think of what she could be when she was older. Children never looked to the future.

  No one sat near the child, leaving an empty chair on each side. How easy it would be to rile the children into teasing the girl. Kyrell had decided to egg on what he felt was only the inevitable. They couldn’t see him, especially in the middle of the day, so he edged his way behind a boy and planted a thought into his pointed little head.

  Pull Ruth’s hair.

  The fat, freckled face kid did just that, and Ruth stood up with a dignity no nine-year-old should possess and stared right at Kyrell. That got his attention. She could see him. Ruth shook her head and walked away. He saw a strength and determination in those green eyes that he wanted to destroy.

  He followed her home from school, and as she walked, her step quickened. When they drew closer to her house, she turned and yelled, “Go away! Leave me alone! Why are you following me?”

  Her stepfather appeared on the porch. “Who you yellin’ at, stupid heifer?”

  She pointed to Kyrell, leaning against a telephone pole, and said, “Him.”

  Kyrell smiled to himself. That old drunk wouldn’t see him.

  “No one’s there, girl. Now get in here and fix me lunch. Your worthless mother didn’t leave me anything to eat before she went to work.” Her stepdad shoved her hard in the back and she stumbled into the house.

  Over the years, no matter where Kyrell was sent, he always found his way back to that determined girl. When Ruth was fourteen, he possessed her drunk of a stepfather and beat and raped her. Then three days later, he convinced the fool that he wasn’t worth another breath and Ruth’s stepfather hung himself—in her bedroom.

  It made Kyrell spitting mad, that despite everything he did, she had somehow found the strength to move forward, and seemed relatively happy. The girl prayed daily and faithfully attended the little Baptist Church on the corner. She was everything he wasn’t—pure, good, light. And he hated her for it.

  Kyrell noticed that no matter the time of day, she could see and hear him, yet he couldn’t control her. Oh, he could hurt her through others, but never control her. Determined to break her, he had her raped three times before her sixteenth birthday. Still, she prayed to her God and asked for mercy.

  No matter what, he came back to her, determined to destroy her faith, her peace. And he did. When Memphis was a toddling brat of four, her father disappeared, without any help from Kyrell, and Kyrell introduced her to Gary Fellows.

  Gary Fellows and the disappearance of her husband had changed everything.

  Sunday evening, Laif still sat beside her bed. It had now been two days with no sign of concerned family or friends for Memphis. The police had arrested her boss, Shane Evans, earlier that morning for her attempted murder.

  Tiegan could do nothing until Memphis woke up and gave the police a statement. He couldn’t very well tell his Captain that a Night Shadow had invaded the body of her boss and made him shoot her. Nor could he hide the fact that Mr. Evans had the acidic smell of gunshot residue on his person.

  The lab techs had confirmed he did indeed have GSR on his hands. Not to mention the fact that blood droplets had been followed from where Memphis had collapsed, all the way back to the alley behind Mr. Evan’s business, Beauty’s Skin Deep.

  With all that, Tiegan and crew had obtained a search warrant and quickly found the Berretta M9 in Evan’s apartment above the tattoo parlor, which was a match to the 9mm bullet taken from Memphis’s body during surgery.

  The evidence spoke for itself. Unless Memphis had a good reason for the gun to have gone off, the guy would spend a long time in prison. Which was just fine, as far as Laif was concerned.

  Laif leaned closer to the bed, one of her hands rested softly in his. Gently, he brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. His fingers lingered, tracing the tiny crease above her eyebrow.

  Without any warning, she opened her eyes and smiled. Like she hadn’t been lying in a hospital bed for the past two days unconscious. Laif leaned closer as her mouth moved.

  “Thanks for taking care of me, my dark angel.” Her eyes fell shut again, closing the door for any chance at conversation.

  Frozen for a second, he stared at the rise and fall of her chest. His lips curved at the corners and whispered, “Dark angel, huh?”

  He watched her sleep for over an hour, studying her arched brow, the bow of her lips, the soft creamy flesh of her innocent-looking face. A dusting of freckles covered her thin straight nose and spilled onto her polished cheekbones.

  Simple beauty. He closed his eyes briefly and leaned down to kiss her hand just as it was wrenched from his grasp. Her body twisted violently, and she clawed at her neck. He grabbed her wrists to keep her from scratching the pale skin, and then she stiffened and stopped breathing.

  Laif swore, jumping up, but by the time he raised her head, air rushed out her lungs and back in.

  She flinched, her face contorted in pain as she mumbled, “Church.”

  Church? What? Her head snapped back like she’d been slapped, and words tumbled out. “…with friends…didn’t do anything wrong. Please, no!”

  Fury poured through Laif as her hands flew up to block an invisible attacker. She jerked and flailed, eyes squeezed shut, body tensed. Laif jumped up and held her arms as she kicked the sheets from her legs. Scared she’d fall off the bed, he tried to lean down and pull her closer to his body. He pushed the nurse’s button.

  His mom dashed into the room. “What’s wrong?”

  Memphis relaxed for a minute but then let out a blood-curdling scream. He moved to lay beside her, her wrists in one hand, the other cradling her body against his.

  “Shh. It’s okay.” He pressed his lips to her cheek. “No one will ever hurt you again.” His fingers glided over her tear-streaked cheek and brushed her damp hair out of her face as he continued to mumble words meant to comfort.

  “Son, I need to check on her.” Lydia nudged him but Laif couldn’t seem to pull himself away.

  A
s Lydia’s fingers wrapped around Memphis’s wrist she whimpered, “Don’t make me do this.”

  Laif’s fists balled on the mattress. “She’s having a nightmare. Can’t you do something?” His eyes darted between his mother and the woman who was squeezing his heart.

  After a few moments of studying the readout on the machines she was hooked up to, Lydia shook her head. “Her heart rate’s a little high, but other than that, her vitals are fine. There’s not much we can do but sedate her more or lower the drug level and try to wake her, and I can only do that if a doctor orders it. I’ll give Dr. Begay a call.”

  Not good enough.

  “It’s okay. I’m here.” He kept his voice soft, his lips against her ear.

  Memphis stopped thrashing and quieted down so he let her wrists go. Eyes still closed, one hand came to Laif’s face and she stroked his cheek with her thumb. “Angel,” she whispered.

  Lydia pulled over a chair and sat down. “Honey, she’s...” His mom stopped talking for a moment. “She acts like some of the rape victims I work with.”

  Laif got that. Even understood what his mom wasn’t saying. She would take extra care and work. Might be broken. He didn’t care if she was. If she’d been raped, he’d deal with it and help her through it the best he could. His mom was a prime example that a woman could recover from things like that with help. He’d get her help. He’d do whatever it took to see her whole.

  He raised his head, opening his eyes. “We’ll help her through whatever it is.”

  Lydia sat up and leaned closer to the bed, placing her hand over his, which held Memphis’s. “This might be difficult. She may not want your help. The last time you were together, she acted like she wanted to kill you.”

  When he opened his mouth to argue, Lydia shook her head. “I’m not saying don’t try, but a lot has changed for you in the last few days. She’s been asleep while you’ve been dealing with what you feel for her. She might need time to catch up.” She stood, patted his shoulder, and said, “You might want to get out of her bed soon. Don’t want to get too comfortable there.”