Shadow Bloodlines (Shadow Bloodlines #1) (13 page)

Trying to picture him and Mom together, and happy, wasn’t working. I could see snippets of why she liked him, though. His calmness, despite my yelling at him earlier, his temperament seemed… peaceful. Like he could be a counselor or something, and you just couldn’t stop blurting out everything when he gave you his full attention.

He took the last bite of his gumbo and asked the waitress to bring us the to-go orders.

As soon as she took the empty dishes, I leaned forward and whispered, “I understand if you had to leave to safeguard Mom, but why not take me with you? You’re an octopus, like me, wouldn’t you be able to teach me rather than her?” A human. An innocent, wonderful mom who could be a pain about curfew and picking my clothes off the floor, and gave a wicked pedicure—but what did she know about octopi or shifters?

“I argued with your mother in that regard, but both my animals’ natures won out and sided with her on letting you stay with her rather than coming with me. Every day, I’ve regretted the decision, but fighting my natures wasn’t hard after the first several years.”

Yes, Amar had told me when we first met about Octopi not rearing their young. But both animals? “What do you mean? I know about octopus… the whydah bird doesn’t raise their offspring either?”

“No, they’re a brood parasite.”

I raised my eyebrows in question.

He chuckled. “It’s a bird that lays their eggs in another bird’s nest to nurture.”

“How does the other bird not know it’s isn’t her egg or chick?” I didn’t like the sound of this. Had he dumped me with mom because of the cop out of his animals? I would never abandon my child with a human spouse and leave them both defenseless. I pushed my glass away.

“The eggs are similar to the host birds so they blend in. The host bird never notices when her eggs hatch along with the whydah’s. Even though they are slightly larger.”

“But we aren’t talking about creatures. We are talking about me—about my mom!” My hands fisted. “And thanks to you she’s dead. I nearly died too. Is that your idea of sheltering us?!” I pushed away from the table and crossed my hands in my lap. “I want to leave now.” When he didn’t respond, I leapt up and left the restaurant.

I hated him even more now. It was easy to think of him as a young man who didn’t like responsibility. But now to know we’d been a family for over a year when he vanished…

When I heard him call my name, I didn’t stop. I ran. Not even knowing where I was going, I kept my tennis shoes slapping against the pavement until my side burned and I slowed my pace. A glance behind me showed he hadn’t followed. Good. I didn’t think I could look at his face anymore right now.

To my left, the sound of a tennis ball being smacking back and forth caught my attention. What had Mom thought when Dad told her he was a shifter? Or had he lied about telling her? Would she even have believed him?

I clutched my arms over my middle. God, what if he had told her and she hadn’t believed him? Maybe she thought it was a trick he had used to run away from her, from us. That would explain why she often said she didn’t want to talk about him. And only gave me bits and pieces of their times together.

Somehow he should have convinced her. Or at least left an instruction manual for me. Something that I could have used to practice my abilities and not be blindsided. Then I realized if he had my mom would have just thrown it out thinking she was supporting his lie if she kept it.

Oh, Mom. Tears fell down my face but I made no move to stop them. I passed the tennis court; the couple from earlier were gone. The sea air breezed through me and the palms lined up the street.

Around a corner, the scuff of a boot behind me had me glancing over my shoulder.

Fear froze me in my tracks. There, along the street highlighted by the street lights and windows of homes and businesses, were shadows spreading and shaped like someone had poured a vat of black ink, making long jagged fingers. As if the shapes had a mind of their own, they dragged along the ground, forward. As they passed under a couple kissing on a bench, the man and woman jerked apart looking around.

Then, as if not finding its victim, the inky shadow continued forward, drifting closer to me. The couple shuffled away as though spooked. When I turned to run, I spotted more dark shadows emerging from the other side of the street. There was nowhere to go.

My heart clawed up into my throat until I thought I would choke. The shadow looked like blackness stripped of light; it scraped across the ground like as if it were made of living pitch. From both directions on the street, it spread out tendrils and heaved its mass behind it. Palm and pine trees shivered like they were caught in an invisible wind, their leaves breaking off and sprinkling down onto the shadow. It didn’t move up their trunks though, just along the bases as it crawled forward with thin coils.

The shadow’s mass spread across the bottom of homes and businesses and patches of lawns, moving closer to me. There was a business parking lot to my left, but beyond it, another oozing shadow crept forward. I was trapped. These had to be from Ms. Moor. The crazed shadow creatures Amar had warned me about were here!

The shadows kept to the ground. They did not rove over the houses, but stayed horizontal, each only about a foot in height.

They’d already enclosed the base of the hotel parking garage.

“Climb the tree!” My dad shouted from somewhere behind me.

Where?
The closest thing besides a blinking streetlight was a palm tree, but I’d be running toward the shadows. And the palm didn’t have any branches like an oak or maple tree, it was just big and round until the very top. If I even reached it in time, how was I supposed to climb it?

I bounced on my toes, hoping another escape would come. A brush of cool air hit me and, behind me, the black fingers nearly touched my shoes. I leapt away, running toward the tree, hoping I would make it—and that maybe my spirit animal was a monkey or whatever could scramble up palm trees.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my dad dashing along the rooftops, parallel to the palm tree. He sprang from one roof to the next like a squirrel. I focused my eyes ahead of me toward the tree. Glancing over my shoulder, the shadows pursued, closing in. My breath thumped in my chest. I didn’t want those things touching me.

I had to make it.

Images of Amar flashed in my mind. Why had I agreed to go with my father? Maybe Dad knocked out Amar, and now he was coming after me? Maybe he got a kick out watching someone try to escape evil as it coiled across the earth. Would Jacqui be next?

Swallowing back bile, I leapt over a bag of trash, then collided with the palm tree head first. Despite my spinning vision, I scrambled up, but only managed to get a foot off the ground before sliding back down. The bark bit into my hands and arms. The shadows merged closer.

Again, I hugged the tree and forced myself up. No good. I slid to the bottom and lost my balance landing on my butt.

Grunting, I rose and tried to focus on using my legs more and got an inch further up the tree, but felt my grip slipping.

“Use your arms!” Dad yelled.

What did the heck did he think I was using? My teeth? “I am!” I shouted back. Why wasn’t he helping me?

“No, your octopus ones!”

“I-I don’t know how.” Truth. I’d only been lucky the first time with Ms. Moor and her goons when they were coming after us.

His shoes scurried across a rooftop, then landed on another and another until he was across the street from me.

“Don’t look at the ground.” Jonathan cupped his hands over his mouth to shout over the distance of the building’s roof he was on and my tree. “Reach up for the branches as though they are just beyond your fingertips. See yourself reaching them. Or just use your octopus arms to hold yourself up. The shadows can’t climb or rise unless they latch onto you. Get off the ground. Hurry! It’s almost there!”

I didn’t want to see the shadows converge underneath me, yet I didn’t know how to do what he said. My weight shifted and I skidded down, a breath from the ground.

“I don’t know how to use my power.” You were never there to teach me, remember?

“Imagine yourself reaching the top of the tree and hoisting yourself up,” he answered. “Don’t think about how or anything else other than the goal.”

Cringing, I eased one hand higher on the bark and stretched my awareness to the palm’s branches.

Were the leaves smooth or prickly? I fixated on the top of the palm, watching it sway gently in the evening breeze. The scent of the ocean and the spicy aroma of the Cajun restaurant we had just left mingled in the air with a smell like burned oil.

“That’s it.” He was too far, I guessed, for his octopus arms to reach me. “Keep your focus up; don’t draw the shadows up with you.”

I felt as though I was moving. Upwards. Or like the tree was shrinking down to meet me. My human hands brushed along the bark halfway up the tree. Another foot or two and I was almost at the top, the needles touching my back. I winced as a splinter pierced my hand. For only a second I took my eyes off the top of the tree to examine the splinter in my palm, and I fell backward.

There was nothing under me but cement and shadows.

My dad’s voice rang out. In vain, I tried to grasp the tree. But I was falling too fast and was not skilled enough to catch myself while plunging to the ground.

Suddenly, a whoosh blew my hair into my face and I felt arms around me. At first, I thought the shadow had me and I struggled.

“Careful.” Amar’s husky voice sent shivers up and down my body. “I am not fully healed yet, but the Spirits of Blood have nearly shrouded the entire island.”

“Thank you.” I clung to his neck giving him a hug. I was so happy he was alive that I kissed his neck. “Again, for saving me from falling.”

He winced but nodded.

“My dad, Jonathan, said you’d be out until morning. Is it dangerous to fly…with me?” And maybe my dad wasn’t the villain I thought him to be. “How did you find me?”

“I’ll be fine. Just might not be able to fly again for a day or two.” He landed on the roof of the hotel parking lot across from the dock and my dad’s boat. When he set me onto my feet, I already missed the warmth of his touch. “Your terror surged through me. Perhaps because your blood broke me from my stone prison, it lures me to you like a polar bear that can smell its prey over a half a mile away, or buried under three feet of snow.” His grey eyes held curiosity and something else as he tilted his head to the side, examining me.

“What about my dad, and where’s Jacqui?” I bit my lip scanning the area. Hopefully, my friend was safe on the boat. Dad had tried to save me and I’d repaid him by leaving him while the undulating pitch searched for shifter victims. From my vantage point three stories up, I could see half the island from the hotel’s parking garage roof. “Do you think you could bring him back here? I know it would be a strain to carry his weight, but…”

“No need.” Amar pointed into the distance at a group of homes in a cul-de-sac on a nearby street. “Here he comes now. And it looks like the Spirits of Blood follow him.”

“Great.” My hand covered my stomach as I watched my dad try to outrun the creeping darkness. He was tired; I could tell by his run, which had turned into a hobble. “He’s not going to make it.” Why had he left the safety of the house’s rooftop?

I had to do something. These things had killed my mom and now they were after my dad. No way was I letting these things kill someone else, let alone another family member.

I leapt down the parking garage’s stairs and heard Amar shout after me. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Outside again, I dashed across the street.

“No!” My dad yelled and waved me back when he saw me running towards him. But then he staggered.

Darkness pressed in. Behind me, Amar shouted in a foreign language, which I was pretty sure was cursing. Then he flew past me.

The black shadows surrounded my dad, picking up speed as they bowled toward him.

“Leave, save yourself!” Jonathan yelled as the blackness swallowed his shoes.

Amar reached down and snagged his arm, but the shadow refused to submit purchase. As if sensing Amar was trying to help, a whip of blackness reached up and slashed him. He wavered in the air but kept his grip on my dad. I had to do something.

Sprinting, I shook my arms and forced my awareness forward. Maybe I could smack them away with my octopus arms long enough for them to escape? My dad must have known what I was trying to do because he shoved his hands out as though trying to use his skills too and thrust away the coiling pitch.

Nothing.

Still, maybe with two of us, it would work. This time, when I pressed my awareness outside of my body, it was easier. But the churning pitch didn’t respond to either of us and looped up around my dad’s torso. His face contorted in agony.

Amar said something to my dad that I couldn’t hear, but he appeared to tighten his grip around him. With one hand free, Amar put his obsidian knife between his teeth, while holding onto my dad with the other.

Then Amar, keeping the blade in his mouth, sliced his free hand. With his hand bleeding, he removed the blade from his teeth then tucked it back in the waist of his shorts. After he shifted his uncut hand on my dad in what I assumed was a better grip, Amar dribbled his blood in a tight circle onto the shadow and it pulsed and folded on top of itself almost as though it was fighting itself to gorge on the drops of blood.

The blackness retreated down my dad’s body, and he and Amar rose into the air, almost free.

I breathed a sigh. Then the shadowed fingers jetted upwards, soaring straight toward them. “No!”

Amar ducked a swipe, but he couldn’t fly higher while wrestling with holding onto my dad. Black whips chased them. Because my dad was still attached to the black ink blob, their movements away only caused them to fly in a circle about two feet from the ground.

Welts and blood appeared on my dad and Amar, whose wings appeared to slow with each strike. The concrete street before me seemed to stretch.

I rushed forward, my sneakers slapping the road, and Amar gave me a look that stopped not only my feet but my heart. Then, with a grimace, he squeezed his hand on the darkness on my dad’s legs. And when the shadow took a leap toward him, leaving my dad exposed for a moment, Amar tossed my dad into the air toward me. I screamed.

But my dad flew through the air for a moment, then crashed on top of a van. A moment later, he scrambled down and limped to me. “Come, there’s nothing we can do for him.”

What? I spun back around to see Amar’s limbs wrapped up in black vines, then he plummeted toward the mass of pitch spread out on the street.

“No!” I took a step forward, but my dad snatched my arm. “Let me go. I have to do
something
.”

“You’ll only get yourself captured too… or killed.”

Amar struggled from the creature and rose a foot from the ground, but the strain of the things would kill him if I did nothing. He had saved me.

Now it was my turn to save him. Amar lifted his gaze until he met my eyes as he collapsed again into the blob that stuck like tar and hauled him back down to the ground. Even in the agony of those shadowed stings that brought bright red blood with each touch, he mouthed the word, “Go.”

“It’s too late to save him.” My dad pulled on my arm again.

“I don’t care. I can’t lose him!” Without asking, I knew Amar would not survive this alone. That he would not be able to fly while coated in black pitch. Wrestling out of my dad’s grip, I ran with tears stinging my eyes and determination until I smacked into the pitch, my thoughts on reaching Amar.