Return to the Shadows (13 page)

The room was bathed in shadow and full of
plump, artfully placed furniture. Plastic coverings protected the
living room set. It was next to impossible to discern much beyond
the general shapes of the pieces; a couch, an overstuffed love
seat, two recliners, and a couple of coffee tables complete with
high back chairs. I imagined the set was some sort of Victorian
style; one elegantly-patterned sofa arm stuck out from under the
plastic. A row of tiny polished brass buttons marched up the front
edge of the piece of furniture.

The strong odor of mildew clung to the stale
air; I leaned out the open window I’d just entered through and took
a deep, cleansing breath before continuing through the silent
house. Each filmy window I passed was a grim reminder that the sun
was setting and would soon relinquish its position to the moon. I
had to hurry. Time was running out and we couldn’t afford to get
caught on the streets after dark. Not here in this ruined place.
Even one weakened beast would be deadly, and that wasn’t taking
into account the other...things...that we had the potential to
encounter.

Moving swiftly into the kitchen, I made quick
work of locating several plastic grocery sacks, mentally berating
myself when, out of habit, I reached out to flip on the switch for
the overhead light.

Silly. The electricity in this house was long
gone. That much was appallingly obvious when I opened the stainless
steel refrigerator that sat in a little alcove in the far corner of
the kitchen. What possessed me to open the fridge door, I can’t
say. Of course, I knew that any perishable food left behind would
be beyond spoiled, and how many people stored non-perishable items
in a refrigerator? Even if the owners of this house did store such
items in the icebox, the dry food would have been contaminated by
mold by now, if the fuzzy lumps on the shelves that used to be food
were anything to go by. The space was a breeding ground for a
bacterial infection. I shuddered, closing the door and trying the
freezer with trepidation.

Nothing but spoiled meat and the congealed
remains of what probably used to be ice cream. I sighed.

A thin shaft of light from the kitchen’s
large bay window caught the glint of silver a split second before
the freezer door closed. Silver? Pulling the door wide open, I
stood on the edge of my toes for a closer look. A pile of slender
silver cards was stacked in the left hand corner of the freezer.
Razor thin and plated in one hundred percent genuine silver, I
immediately recognized what the cards were; besides the answer to
my prayers, the cards were the equivalent of credit in Terlain. The
silver could be scanned by the machines in most stores and
restaurants around the territories in exchange for goods and
services.

Unlike a traditional credit card, however,
these cards bore no name across the front, only a thin blue strip
on the bottom and the official round emblem of Terlain in the upper
right corner; they came pre-loaded with whatever amount of money
one had added to the card, and thus were fully transferable. Ashley
and I could use the cards.

I closed my eyes and squeezed the pile of
cards until my fingers ached. “Thank you,” I whispered to the empty
room. We could buy clothes. We could buy fuel and anything else we
needed. The minuscule amount of gold we had brought with us from
Africa would have seen us through our journey—barely. But the rules
had changed. Compared to the cost of buying our own fuel as opposed
to paying for a buggy ride or a chauffeured vehicle, the small pile
of gold in my backpack seemed a paltry amount. We would be hard
pressed to handle any financial emergencies or anything beyond the
short term with my provisions alone.

With the silver cards, however... I did a
little two-step around the kitchen counter and began to root around
the glossy oak cabinets for food and anything else useful. Maybe
the celebration was a bit premature; after all, I was not even sure
there was money loaded onto the cards, but was ninety-nine percent
sure there would be at least a little currency left on them. Why
else would they have been tucked away in the back of a freezer?
They had probably been some sort of emergency fund for the family
that had owned this house. I felt the pang of an emotion that was
part sympathy, part guilt when I thought of the people who used to
live here. Despite what I’d told Ashley about our actions being
socially acceptable for the circumstance we found ourselves in, I
had misgivings about taking the cards. What if the family returned
to their home at some point? Sure, this was probably not going to
happen; they wouldn’t have fled to safety without their vehicle.
Bottom line, they were not coming back. So why did this feel like I
was looting? I supposed that, in a way, I was.

A howl in the distance brought my attention
back to the present and more pressing matters. The fierce sound
echoed in the distance, closer now. I froze, the blood in my veins
turning to ice. I had heard that sound before. The Retrievers were
coming. I hastily shoved a few more packets of granola into my bag,
wiped my hands across my jeans, and made a mad dash for the front
door. The sense of panic didn’t stop me from making a careful
perusal of the street, no matter how bad I wanted to rush onto the
porch, grab my daughter, and run. I knew that she must be frantic
after hearing the animals—if one could call Retriever wolves
“animals.” I shuddered.

Seeing that nothing obvious lurked beyond the
porch, I scurried out the door and down the steps, frantically
whispering to Ashley even as I hauled her from the bushes and down
the walk to the car. The keys. Shit. Hell. Damn.

“I forgot the keys,” I uttered, closing my
eyes, feeling the cool exterior of the SUV press against my
forehead.

“That’s not good, is it?” Ashley bit her lip,
peering around the vehicle to the street beyond.

“It’s fine. I remember seeing them on a peg
in the kitchen.” At least I hoped the set of keys I’d seen had at
least one belonging to the car. If not… I swallowed audibly as I
watched the shadows continue to deepen around us, day turning
inexorably to night. If not, I was pretty sure I would be the one
in hysterics.

“Come on, you can come with me this
time.”

“It’s getting dark.”

“I know, we’ll be out of here in two minutes.
The kitchen is at the back of the house,” I whispered as we hurried
across the threshold.

Luck had graced us for a second time that day
because, after dashing back to the SUV, heavy key ring in hand, we
found that one of the keys did in fact belong to the midnight blue
set of wheels. We sped through Twelfth Street a moment later, bags
tossed into the back seat, the last rays of the sun disappearing in
the rearview mirror.

Chapter Seven

To Find a Warrior

The forest beckoned, trees thick on either
side of the narrow path, their long, spindly branches reaching out
like gnarled fingers. I thought about turning around, giving
serious consideration to finding another way to get to Grandview.
It was a tough call to make. The last thing in the world I wanted
to do at the moment was get lost and wander aimlessly on some dark
treacherous back road. On the other hand, I didn’t particularly
relish the thought of going into labyrinth Muerta either. I could
only imagine why it was so named.

Letting the engine idle for a full two
minutes, I chewed on a fingernail, hoping to gain some sudden
insight on the best course of action. I had never taken this road
before and really had no idea what to expect, although if the name
and appearance were any indication, the smart thing to do would be
to whip the car around and speed off into the night—in any
direction but forward! But where would we go? This was the only
road that I knew for certain would take us to Grandview.

I tightened my fingers around the leathery
material that covered the steering wheel and sighed. We would have
to take the path. The alternative was to double back around and
take the left fork in the road back toward civilization, if you
could call the demolished cities that made up the county
“civilization.”

The further away from Lerna we had driven,
the more distant the Retrievers howling had become, so going back
would be risking a run-in with the devil dogs and quite possibly
the Scavengers as well, for one creature was never very far from
the other. The Scavengers were usually the first to be seen. They
used their paralyzing venom to incapacitate their prey before the
Retrievers stepped in and either took the unfortunate soul to Kahn
or disposed of the body on their own. It was not a risk I felt
willing to take, not with Ashley and not with myself. I hadn’t
forgotten my last encounter with the Scavengers and Retrievers, and
probably never would. Underestimating them was another sin I vowed
to avoid repeating, for I knew firsthand how quickly they could
team up and put a person out of commission. No, I decided, we would
continue forward and hope that anything out there in this
godforsaken forest was either sleeping or otherwise occupied.

I knew that it was probably too much to hope
for, but I prayed Ashley would remain asleep until we were well out
of the woods, especially if we were unlucky enough to encounter
trouble along the way.

The tapping sound on the window had me
jerking around in the driver’s seat, startled. A scream rose in my
throat when I came face to face with the ghastly white thing
pressed close to the window only inches from me. Heavily pitted
skin the color of bleached flour stretched over teeth that were
bared in an obscene grin, sharp teeth and round bulging eyes making
a perverted mockery of the expression of joy. I knew immediately
what I was staring at, its name suddenly crystal clear in my
mind—Coatyl.

I sat transfixed and unmoving, not daring to
do so much as breathe, even though every fiber of my being cried
out for me to flee. Time froze in a sick sort of suspended
animation. The beast raised one hand, his long fingernails catching
the moon’s rays and reflecting them like light on a steel blade
before slowly, deliberately bringing the knobby fingers down and
scraping them along the side of the SUV. The screech of metal being
sliced away broke the terrified spell I seemed to have been trapped
in, my breath caught on a sob. I slammed my foot down on the gas
pedal without further delay and shot down the road, a spray of dust
obliterating the view of the road behind us. Slow, I mentally
cautioned about a mile down the pitch dark road, abruptly
discovering why a dirt road would be called a labyrinth as the path
cut sharply to the right. The car’s wheels spun out wildly for a
heart-stopping moment, tires struggling to regain traction while I
wrestled with the steering wheel for control. I narrowly avoided
ramming the vehicle into a thick groves of trees and half dead
vegetation several more times before the harrowing journey was over
and done with, but finally, we reached the end of the path.
Surprisingly, nothing else materialized out of the darkness,
although I imagined I saw menacing creatures around every
corner.

I peered from the inky black forest that
surrounded us. In my head they were always only a hair away from
leaping out at us and I remained on edge until, at long last, we
emerged from labyrinth Muerta, frightened but otherwise unscathed.
Rather, I was rattled. Ashley had somehow managed to sleep through
the horrifying midnight ride, and for that I was profoundly
grateful. The relief intensified ten-fold when I spotted the
telltale shimmer in the distance. “Oh thank you, Lord.” The lights
of Grandview burned low but bright in the dark, the gentle glow of
the fence bathing the town in a halo of liquid gold. “We’re safe
now. We’re safe,” I whispered to a sleeping Ashley, needing to
speak the words aloud, seeking to reassure myself more than
anything else that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out all
right after all.

I drove around town for several minutes,
letting the gentle illumination of people and life and normalcy
wash over me. So acutely aware was I of my stress dissipating,
evaporating into the night, that I was hesitant to put the moment
to an end. I knew that the minute I did, my sense of peace and
solitude would end. Maybe it wouldn’t be tonight or tomorrow, or
even the night after that, but at some point, a whole new set of
problems would inevitably present themselves, and when that
happened, I knew my hard won peace would come crashing down like a
house of cards in a hurricane.

There was another reason why my hands went
cool and clammy as I deftly turned the SUV down the long, winding
tree-lined lane that led to Bob and Marta’s sprawling estate. I was
about to see Mark for the first time in a year. The slender trees
that rolled past on the ascent up the paved road would have, under
normal circumstances, captivated my attention, their dome-shaped
tops swaying in the light breeze.

Pale pink blossoms fluttered lazily to the
ground, a few buttery-looking petals coming to rest on the hood of
the car, their pastel hue providing a sharp contrast to the deep
blue of the SUV’s hood.

Tonight, however, the beauty of the scene was
a pale imitation of the real thing. My mind was on other, more
imminent matters, such as what I would say to the three
unsuspecting residents of the house that came into view as we
crested the hill. What would they say to me? It was hard not to be
nervous about our upcoming meeting; after all, I was about to
spring not only myself, but a six-year-old child upon them in the
middle of the night.

A year had passed since I had vanished from
their lives without so much as a goodbye, see you later, and it was
impossible not to worry about their reaction. They probably assumed
that I was dead, I thought with a cringe.