Return to the Shadows (15 page)

“You’re trying not to laugh at me, aren’t
you?” I pointed an accusing finger at her.

“Who, me? Nope, I wouldn’t dream of laughing
at you.”

“Liar.”

“Here, let’s sit for a while.”

“Are we safe here?”

She scanned our surroundings with a watchful
eye before dropping down to a ledge that jutted from the side of
the mountain. “We should be safe enough. But we need to get moving
again soon.”

“Great,” I muttered, taking a seat beside
her. The rock was cold and sharp, even through the thick denim I
was wearing. The heavy cloth had been a major hindrance during the
first day of our travels. The temperature below the mountain was a
balmy seventy-three degrees and the thick material had slowed us
down. At least it had slowed me down. Aries appeared to have been
largely unaffected by the heat and exertion.

“How are you doing that?”

“How am I doing what?”

“This.” I waved my arms in front of us. “All
of this. You never sit. You don’t get cold or tired.

What’s your secret?”

“I get tired,” she protested.

“Well, you can’t prove it by me.” I thought
of how she had lit up the trees in her forest and how one touch,
one breath from her and the other nymphs had given me strength, and
figured her super human stamina must have had something to do with
it. I couldn’t begin to break that down into scientific terms so I
didn’t even try. People were just different here, I
acknowledged.

“Drink this.” Aries waved a silver flask in
front of my face and flashed an indulgent smile.

“Is it a magic potion?”

“No, it’s just plain water.”

“Then I don’t want it.”

“Claire—”

“Oh fine, you’re right,” I sighed as I took
the drink she offered and gulped it down. It was good and cold, if
nothing else.

“You’re nervous about seeing Mark again,
aren’t you?”

I thought about the question for several
moments, unsure how I felt about seeing him again. And it was not
for lack of trying. The best way that I could hope to explain it
was confusion, which was a word that I loathed, by the way. It was
so indecisive; it told you nothing. But every time I had pictured
seeing Mark again, I felt something different. In the days
immediately following my return home, I felt like I was still with
him. Like he had gone to the store and would return at any moment,
almost as if I were in denial about leaving him in Terlain. As
crazy as that sounded, I felt as though my return home was little
more than a weekend trip, that I would be back soon. When had I
begun thinking of Grandview as home? I couldn’t say, yet there it
was. It felt good to be back, if not a tad unsettling. Life had a
way of going on whether you’re there or not, and a lot had changed
in Terlain. I had my work cut out for me. I was determined to find
out why the fences were failing, and also to try to get a search
and rescue started for the missing townspeople that encompassed an
area the size of the Western hemisphere. I had to find the Warrior
of the Ruins, who, in all likelihood, was Mark. I had to accomplish
all of this while taking care of Ashley. Most important of all, I
had to ensure the child’s safety…meaning I had to go about all of
the above and stay alive while doing it. A pretty tall order when
one thought about all the ways to get killed in Terlain, which I
personally did not care to ponder. Suffice it to say, I had to stay
alert at all times. Alert and armed.

Once again, I second-guessed my decision to
bring my daughter with me to Terlain. If I had taken her with me
out of some selfish need to keep her with me.... No, I decided, my
actions were strictly focused on what was best for Ashley. Nothing
more. Except that I loved her. She loved me too, and I was all that
she had. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t technically true anymore. She
had my parents, her uncle Mike, and her aunt Megan. She had her new
uncle, and soon she would have a brand new baby cousin. But I was
her mother now. The only mother she could remember, I silently
amended. The child’s memory loss still bothered me, but that was
another matter.

“Claire?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was thinking about…a lot
actually.” I laughed nervously.

“I noticed.”

“I might be a bit unsettled about seeing Mark
again. We have a history. A very short one, but a history
nonetheless.”

“I assumed as much from your conversation
with Bob and Marta. And from Marta’s general disposition.”

“She certainly knows how to grumble, doesn’t
she?”

“Right up there with the best of them,” Aries
heartily agreed. “So am I to assume that things ended badly with
Mark?”

“You could say that. But if you asked Mark,
he would likely say that things never ended at all. And, no, that
does not mean there is anything between us now. He has probably
forgotten all about me by now.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No. At least, I hope not.” I wiped damp
hands over my jeans and stood up to pace. “You know, I must have
gone over that day a hundred times. At first I told myself that I
did what I had to do. I didn’t have a choice. I had to save Mike
and Ashley. Especially Ashley,” I added gently.

“What happened that day? The day you left
Terlain.”

“It was early in the day. I had spent the
night with Mark and, well, I won’t go into detail about that,
but—”

“Oh, don’t leave anything out on my account.
Self-expression, you know.” She winked and studied her nails.

“Aries!”

“Sorry,” she grinned, looking anything but.
“Go on with your story.”

“As. I. Was. Saying. The next morning, we had
planned to divide our time. Mark was going out to see what he could
find about Kahn and about my brother’s disappearance. I was going
to finish going over the books in the library. The plan was to meet
up at home later that evening. Bob and Marta’s house. We were going
to compare notes and decide what to do. We knew we had to move
quick and…”

“And?” my companion prompted.

“I was going to wait for him. I really was,
Aries. Marta called me into the kitchen sometime after he had gone.
She needed help getting a heavy box down from a shelf in the
pantry. When I set the box onto the table, I noticed the
information printed on the box flaps. It was a company called
Triniti Supply, and it gave an address.”

“Triniti Supply? Never heard of it.”

“Not many people have. The company used to be
a big deal. It was located in a small village called Keogh. What’s
left of it anyway. The place became a ghost town years ago, from
what I could tell. Marta told me some of the town’s history on my
way out the door.”

“You went to Keogh alone?”

“Yes. You know the town?”

“I know of the town. It’s one of the main
guard stations now.”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“But why did you want to go there?”

“I had a hunch that I would find Kahn there.”
I bit my lip and considered how much to tell her. Even though Aries
was my friend, I hesitated to tell her about the vision in the
Bellevue library, and the shadow man that led me to Triniti Supply,
and Keogh, in the first place. For some reason, I thought it
sounded crazy.

“Anyway, I figured that where I found Kahn, I
would find my brother. Before I saw that box, all I had to go on
was the name of the company—Triniti Supply. So you can imagine how
excited I was to find an address.”

“I’m still not sure I follow, but go on.”

“I was going to wait for Mark. I wanted to
wait for him before I checked out my new lead, but I only had so
many hours of daylight left and, at that point, I was too excited
to sit and read in the library. My plan was to go to Keogh and
simply take a look around, from the safety of Haelport’s
fences.”

“But that’s not what happened?”

“No,” I sighed. “It didn’t work out quite
like that. I found Ashley that day.”

“Wait, I thought you said you adopted
her.”

“I did adopt her. But first I found her. She
was wandering the streets at the edge of the fence.”

“At the Haelport/Keogh border?”

“Yes. But then she left the fence and went
into the woods, into unprotected territory. I called to her, told
her to stop and come back. But she didn’t hear me, so I followed
her down this path.” I still shuddered at the memory.

“What is it?”

“The path I followed her down….”

“What about it?”

“There were ghosts there. Ghost girls. They
lined the path on both sides. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I
shook my head to clear away the memory.

“The dolls,” Aries breathed. “You’ve seen the
dolls.”

“Other people have seen them too?” That was a
relief.

“Yes. The woods of Keogh are believed by many
to be haunted by the spirits of the children who died there. Or
were taken from there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There was an orphanage in Haelport years
ago. It used to sit on the edge of town.”

“Where I found Ashley?”

“Sounds about right, yes. The children in the
orphanage began to come up missing. The sad truth is, at first, no
one thought much of the disappearances. It was not uncommon for
orphans to run away, or to wander off. The children’s homes are not
the best places to live, and as a rule, they aren’t very well
staffed. But more and more children began to disappear. Sometimes
as many as two or three in a week’s time.”

“Where did they all go?” My heart was
thudding painfully against my rib cage as I waited for the
answer.

“Well, it was never officially confirmed, but
there was talk of the brothel owner, Lydia, and her girls, luring
the children into that forest. The girls went to work in her
brothel. The boys were delivered to Kahn to build his army.”

“Oh Lord.”

“The ghost girls are believed to haunt the
forest there to warn people away from the woods. And from Lydia and
the Lauhuel.”

“The Lahuel? Who are they?”

“You mean what is it?” Aries shivered in the
cool breeze of the mountain. “The Lahuel was a demon warrior who
was in charge of delivering souls to Kahn. He was often portrayed
as a god of war. But most of the people in the villages just called
him the Shadow Man.”

My head snapped up at that last part. “The
Shadow Man? Why do they call him that?” I demanded.

“I don’t know. Maybe because of his
appearance. Maybe because he operated in secret, in the shadows.
Who knows?” Aries eyed me cautiously. “The point is, he’s bad
news.”

“I see.” I swallowed hard and made a mental
note to find out everything I could on the Lahuel as soon as we
returned to Grandview.

“So what happened after you saw the
dolls?”

“Why do they call them that?” I murmured,
looking up to the clear sky above.

Aries shrugged. “Something about their
clothing making them look like dolls. Why do you ask?”

“No reason, I guess. Where was I?”

“You met the dolls on the path.”

“Oh, right.” I nodded. “I followed Ashley
down the path and into the woods. She was still just sort of
wandering aimlessly. I saw a group of guards not far from us. It’s
a miracle they didn’t spot us.” I pushed a lock of hair from my
eyes. “My brother was with the guards. They had him tied in the
center of their makeshift camp, in a small clearing. When they
slipped up and left him unguarded for a few moments, I hid Ashley
in some bushes nearby and slipped into the camp to rescue him. For
the most part, he was unharmed. We left the woods and drove to
Lerna, where Mike had buried his key in the woods…the spot where
both of us had crossed over into Terlain from our own world. That’s
when everything went bad, so to speak. We were ambushed in those
woods, right after we retrieved his key. The guards had us
surrounded and we had no weapons, no help…no one even knew where we
were to start looking for us. So we crossed back to our own world.
And we took Ashley with us,” I finished. Aries was still regarding
me in absolute silence.

“I know we shouldn’t have taken her. The
original plan was only to bring her back to Bob and Marta. To leave
her with them so that they could locate her parents, or at least
find her a safe place to stay. I thought about taking her back to
Haelport, but I didn’t want her to wander off again. Not to
mention, I hadn’t a clue where she belonged. That’s why we decided
to take her to Bob and Marta. Then the guards found us.”

“You couldn’t leave her in the woods with
them,” Aries agreed in a comforting tone.

“No, we couldn’t. It would have been a death
sentence, or worse.”

I was relieved that Aries understood why we
had taken Ashley home with us. The first several weeks after we had
returned home, while Mike and I were deciding what to do, I had
lived in a constant fear of being arrested on kidnapping charges.
Which was, of course, ridiculous. But still, the decision to keep
her was not one that I took lightly. “Right after we left Terlain,
I had planned to take her back, the first chance I could. But then,
we noticed the bruises all over her, and she confessed that her
parents were dead. Killed by people she called ‘the bad men.’”

“The guards?”

“I’m assuming so, yes. So that’s when Mike
decided it was best that we destroy our keys and I adopted
her.”

“I’m glad you didn’t destroy your key,
Claire.”

“So am I. I just…couldn’t bring myself to do
it. I should have come back before now, though. I never said
goodbye to Mark, or anyone else.”

“I’m sure he will understand. More than that,
I’m sure he will be glad to see you.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course. You heard what Bob and Marta
said. He practically tore the lands apart looking for you. He was
grief-stricken.”

“Grief-stricken enough to take to the ruins
in the mountains and start his own army?”