Hunting Shadows (Shadow Series #3) (26 page)

My father’s jaw tightened to the point where a muscle started twitching. “I’m offering
this for the last time. Trade places with her. Otherwise, I’ll take the situation
into my own hands.”

Before I could respond,
I heard a sharp crack. M
y father doubled over, howling in pain as he gripped his thigh which was spurting
with blood.

“Shoot him again!” I screamed at
Ryan but my father had already straightened and my mother was still between him and
Ryan’s gun. His pant leg was soaked with blood and he was grimacing with pain, but
his eyes were still bright with hate. “You’ll regret not taking my offer.” He turned
to Philip. “Summon the rest of them!”

I watched horrified as more vardogers started streaming through the broken windows.
They rushed me with such force that I was thrown back onto the ground. I tried to
gather my powers but they were nothing but a whisper. I heard
screaming and then realized
it was coming from me as pain seared through every part of my body. I didn’
t have the strength to fight
back
and I felt my body start to shake as if I was having a seizure.
Instead of my soul being pushed out, it felt
a
s if it were being pushed down and
being buried
deep inside me. The pain was
too much to bear. It felt as though
fingers were actually digging into my heart, stopping it from beating and
ripping out all my humanity
.

I was on the edge of consciousness when I suddenly felt the pressure lighten,
incrementally at first, but then it started pulling back more rapidly. My eyes fluttered
open
an
d I gasped as I tried to take
a full breath. Ryan was
kneeling over me, his teeth bared as sweat poured down his tense face.

“Fight them,” he bit out. “I’m trying to pull them out but I need your help.”

I tried to do
as he asked
but I was too weak to
do anything
. Despite my lack of strength, I felt them releasing
their grip on me. A shudder wracked my body when the last vardoger dissipated into
nothingness and finally I was the only one left in my body.

Ryan was breathing harshly, trying to catch his breath. I struggled to sit up. Now
that the vardogers were gone, my
only
thought was
to destroy
my father before it was too late. Fear propelled me
to stand, my heart almost stopping
when I realized the room was empty except for
me and Ryan.

“Where are they?” I cried, panic setting in.

“I’m sorry,” Ryan said as he stood up. “I couldn’t stop them without lettin
g you die. Your father left and took
your mother and Simon.”

Desperation clawed at me. The idea of finding my mother only to lose her again was
unthinkable. But now Simon…
he had warned me not to be fooled by my father, and my stubbornness had resulted
in him being taken
. I
should have just destroyed my father
when I had the chance instead of listening to his empty prom
ises. I had no idea if he
would just kill Simon or take pleasure in torturing him. I had a feeling it would
be the latter since he seemed to have an affinity for “experimentation.” I almost
got physically sick at the idea of my father hurting Simon. My hate, anger and fear
threatened to consume me and I felt something break inside of me. I had vowed to not
let my father hurt another person close to me, but I had allowed him to hurt the person
I loved most in the world. The hatred for m
y father was only rivaled by my
hatred for myself.

“We’ll find your father. We’ll save them,” Ryan said, but his words were
an
empty promise. We would be able to find them due to his tracking skills, but he couldn’t
guarantee that we could save them.

But I would die trying.

Chapter Twenty
-One

It was pitch black outside as we pursued them
. Ryan drove fast
but they were moving quickly.

“How strong is my father’s energy?” I asked, staring out into the night,
not trying to think of what could be
happening to Simon and my mother.
I felt an odd mixture of numbness and shattering emotion. I would feel nothing until
a sharp slice of emotion would gut me, forcing me to push back the feelings so that
I could concentrate on the
task at hand. Otherwise I would fall apart.

“They’re moving fast but I still have a strong hold of your father’s energy. Don’t
worry, we won’t lose them.”

Despite everything, I was grateful to have Ryan with me. Not only had he saved me
from the vardogers, but with his tracking ability I would be able to catch up to my
father.

“I never thanked you for saving me,” I said quietly. We were on a country road with
no
other cars, and it felt as if
no one else existed
in the world besides
us.

“You don’
t need
to thank me,” Ryan answered, looking straight ahead at the road. “I would do
it
a million times again if I had to.”

“You must be incredibly strong. I couldn’t even count the number of vardogers that
attacked me, yet you were able to destroy them all.”

“It hel
ped that your energy was fighting
them back as well. It wasn’t all me.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t have anything left to fight with. It w
as
all your doing.”

Ryan didn’t answer and I didn’t push him. I knew he was a strong seer, but I didn’
t realize
he was strong enough to destroy
so many vardogers
at once
, especially since
he had seemed amazed when I had been
able to do it.
I wanted to question him further about it but I refrained, wanting to respect his
privacy.
I said nothing as I went back to staring out the window.

“We have to be careful of Philip,” he said, breaking the silence. “He’s shown that
he’s an incredibly powerful vardoger. He must be the one
that’s
able to sustain other vardogers that are unattached to bodies.”

“Like Claudia,” I whispered. “But he’s even stronger. We need to capture him alive
because he’s the key to saving my mother.”

Ryan’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “You need to be prepared for the worst.
Even if your father is telling the truth, that your mother’s s
oul is still inside her body, we don’t know the state of her mind
. A person’s sanity can only take so much before it breaks.”

“I don’t care.” I clenched my hands into fists, sickened by the thought of what my
mother had endured for all these years.
“All that matters is that my mother is still alive. I saw her, she looked straight
at me and I recognized her. I’m going to save her and I’m going to save Simon. There’s
no other alternative.”

Ryan’s jaw
tightened but he didn’t say anything as he continued to drive. I wished that we were
driving on a more populated road. The o
ne we were on was poorly lit
and the lack of other headlights made it seem even mor
e desolate
.

I glanced at Ryan and noticed that his grip on the stee
ring
wheel had tightened so severely
that his knuckles were white and his arms were trembling. Beads of sweat were trickling
down his face, which had turned ashen.

“Are you okay?” I asked concerned. I wondered if fighting all those vardogers had
taken
too much of
a toll on him.

Ryan nodded his head
almost
imperceptibly but kept his gaze forward, not looking at me. My concern deepened when
his whole body started to tremble, making the steering wheel shake. The car started
swerving from his erratic movements and I swallowed a scream when we narrowly missed
hitting a guardrail.

“Ryan, pull over!” There was something seriously wrong with him. As much as I needed
to catch up to my fathe
r, getting into an accident
would make it much more difficult
. Ryan seemed to be suffering through some sort of seizure and we needed to stop the
car before it was too late.

I was relieved when he was able to foll
ow my direction and pulled off o
nto the shoulder. He was still gripping the steering wheel and shaking. I grabbed
one of his arms to pull his hand off the steering wheel, but he recoiled as if my
touch were painful and flung my hand forcefull
y away. I stared at him, shocked by his behavior. Shock turned into fear when he turned
towards me. His face had drained of all blood but his eyes were bloodshot, dozens
of angry veins stark red against the white
s
of his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered shakily, instinctively moving back closer to the car door
to put more distance between us.
His lips were devoid of all color and were trembling when they opened, but ther
e was no mistaking the
one
word he uttered.

“Run.”

It was the second time someone had told me to run in the span of a couple of days
and although my body tensed in preparation to follow the direction, my mind rebelled
at what was happening. I didn’t understand what was going on and I needed Ryan to
track my father.

“What the hell is happening? What’s going on?” I wanted to shriek the words at him,
but I forced myself to stay calm. I put my hand on the car door handle in preparation
to flee, but I couldn’t run without knowing what was happening. And I couldn’t get
pas
t
the fact that I needed Ryan.
I
was
also
worried that he might
need
my help
with whatever was happening to him.

I saw the panic in his eyes, which fueled my fear even more. In
that instant, I decided I needed to
put some distance between us first and ask questions later. I had no idea if he was
possessed by a vardoger or if it was
some other affliction
, but now wasn’t the time to ponder it.

But it was too late. The second I pulled the handle to open the car door, my head
was slammed against the glove compartment. I heard a sickening thud and
felt
wetn
ess running down my face as pain
exploded in my head.
Despite the pain, my hand still scrambled for the door handle as all my instincts
went into survival mode.
My attempt
to
escape was
futile as
Ryan jerked me towards him by my hair, forcing me to lose my grip on the door handle.

He had a maniacal look on his face, far crazier than any expression I had seen on
any vardoger. He bared his teeth and I couldn’t help wondering if he was going to
sink them into me and tear me apart. He looked feral and out of control
and I realized I was in a fight for my life.

I immediately started gathering my energy. There was no way I could beat Ryan on a
physical level, but if there was a vardoger inside him I
would destroy it. I felt a rush of relief
when I felt the familiar humming of my powers growing and I slammed it into R
yan with all the strength I had in me.
I was horrified when he just grinned at me like a madman.

“Sorry, that’s
not going to work on
me,” he said in a ghoulish sing-
songy voice that sounded nothing like him. “You’ll have to try something else.”

I
cried out as his hand twisted
my hair, wrapping it around his
fingers so tightly that it felt like
my scalp was going to rip off.

“Ryan, please! I know you’re in there somewhere! Take control!”

“You bitch.” White foam was forming at the corners of his mouth like he was a rabid
animal and his expression of fury had no hint of sanity. “You’re fucking going to
die now.”

His words fueled me like nothing else could. I couldn’t die. If I died there would
be no one to save my
mother and Simon
. I wasn’t scared of my own death, but I was terrified by the prospect of theirs.

I lashed out with everything I had in me, screaming and flailing my arms, trying to
sink my nails into any soft flesh I could come into contact with.
I raked them across his face, satisfaction surging in me when I saw angry red blo
od streaming down from the scratches
I had inflicted. I reached out again, desperately trying
to gouge
his eyes out, to hurt him
severely
enough to be able to escape.
I was in survival mode and I would do anything to make it out of this alive.

I wanted to scream in frustration when he grabbed my wrists
and slammed them above my head
against the car window. I bucked my body, trying to get free, but he reacted by
holding my wrists against the window with one hand and punching me in the face with
the other. I moaned in pain as I felt my lip split
open
and my mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. Th
e pain in my head from his fist
and the earlier slam against the glove compartment was unbearable and I saw black
spots start to crowd my vision. I forced myself to stay conscious. If I blacked out
,
everything would be over.

“I’m going to make this as painful as possible and I’m going to make sure you’re going
to stay awake for it,” he sneered. He was stretched across the console with his gruesome
face close to mine. I raised my leg and shoved my foot towards hi
m with all the strength
I had left. My foot made contact with his groin and I kicked him again as hard as
I could.

He released m
y wrists, doubling over in pain with a shriek of agony. I took the opportunity to
grab the door handle and pull
ed it
, opening the car door. I could hear him yelling but
I blocked it all out as I ran. T
he only thought pounding in my mind was to get as far away from him as possible.

I jumped over the guard rail and ran into the woods alongside the road. The trees
were close together and I was having a hard time navigating in the dark.
I wanted to look behind me to see if he was pursuing me, but I forced myself to keep
moving forward. I didn’t have a split second to waste and I needed as much of a head
start as possible.

Soon, it became apparent that I didn’t need to turn around to see if he was following
because I heard his footsteps and heavy breathing.
I tried to run as swiftly as possible without making too much noise but I was constantly
running into tree limbs. I was sure my face was bleeding profusely from Ryan’s attack
and all the branches that were scraping against it, but I was oblivious to the pain.
There was so much adrenaline pumping through me that I doubted I could feel much of
anything.

I silently cursed myself when I tripped over a tree root and froze when I heard movement
close by. I could hear twigs snapping underfoot and I tried to stay as still as possible
so that I made no noise. My heart was pounding against my ribcage so hard that
I was scared Ryan would hear it.

I could hear him just a few feet away and I prayed that the cloak of darkness would
protect me. I felt
vulnerable
being on my hands and knees on the ground but I didn’t want to risk making any noise
by standing up.
I couldn’t stop myself from shivering when he spoke in that awful sing-songy voice
again.

“Caitlin, do you really want to prolong this? You’re not going to escape so you might
as well give up. I might be willing to make it less painful for you if you cooperate.”
He laughed hysterically and I began to wonder if Ryan was just plain crazy, having
nothing to do with a vardoger. His voice sounded closer when he spoke again. “Who
am I kidding? I’m going to make this as painful as possible, no matter what. What
do you think it feels like to have your fingers cut off one by one? Maybe I’ll try
ripping the nails off first. I hear that’s excruciating.”

I caught sight of his silhouette in the darkness just a few feet away from me and
I inched to my right so I was completely behind a tree trunk. I covered my mouth with
my hand, trying to stop myself from breathing heavily. I heard his footsteps again
and I wanted to weep in relief when I heard them getting
farther
away. I waited until I could barely hear them in the distance and then rose and started
making my way in the opposite direction as quietly as I could.
Hope was just starting to blossom when I was pulled back violently by my hair.
His breath was close to my ear when he spoke.