The Reverence of One: Book Three of the Shadow Series (2 page)

“I don’t think I’ve told you,” said Test
, trying to lighten the moment
, “but you have a very nice home.”

Setting a cup of coffee in front of him, Lauren replied with a smile. “I know.”
She sat down next to Test
,
took a sip from her mug
,
and while still holding it to her lips, asked, “No
t
what you expected?”

Test felt the rush of embarrassment flow through him as she put him on the spot. “No—I mean yes. It’s…”

“It’s okay,” she replied, cutting him off. “Just because I’m a bitch doesn’t mean I don’t like nice things.” Again the smile appeared on her face just before she took another sip.

“I
didn’t mean—before, I
,”
stuttered
Test.

“
Yes you did
.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment. As she stood from her chair,
Test
spoke
.

“Have you seen Cliff?” he asked

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, he told me to tell you that he’d be gone for a while. Something about going to make peace with his son,” replied Lauren.

Test’s face wrinkled. “His son? He never told me that he had a son.”

“Did you ever ask?” she quipped.

Exhausted from her constantly shifting attitudes, he did
his best to tune her out
and
returned to his cup of coffee. He inhaled the aroma deeply, letting the steam from his breath rebound out of the cup and onto his face. Just before he took the first glorious sip, Lauren ruined it.

“How are you feeling?” she asked
in a strange and uncharacteristically gentle tone
.

Somewhat taken aback by her apparent concern, he
stared at her with a look of confusion.
“Fine thanks
,” he replied.
“I wish Alyssa was here, but other than that, i
t feels good to finally have a moment’s peace.”

“You’re better off without her,” she replied.

Slamming his mug down on the table, Test
reigned in his temper and spoke in an even voice.
“I thought we’ve been over this?
”

She placed her empty mug in the sink and then rested her palms on the outer edges of the large stainless basin. Calmly, Lauren replied. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean any ill will towards her. I’m just saying that she takes away your strength, what with you always releasing energy to keep her on this side. You’re going to need all of the strength you can get. So, soak up your moment’s peace while you can. It won’t last long.”

Her
last sentence was
cold and ominous. Test pushed away from the table and leaned forward
, elbows on his knees
. “What do you mean?”

“Seriously?” she asked as she turned and rested with her back to the counter. “Do you think it’s over?”

Knowing what she meant, but trying to force away the truth that had just been realized, he replied. “
Isaac
?”

Lauren
giggled
and crossed her arms. “
For starters
,” she replied. “I’m afraid that you—we—will have more to worry about than just
Isaac
.”

“From what little you’ve told me, how is there
more
to worry about than Isaac?”

Lauren walked to the table and pulled out a chair on the end. As she took her seat, she replied. “Isaac will assemble an army to find you if he has to. Anil was his right hand man and he will not be pleased that he was destroyed. Besides that, to my knowledge, the Reapers have never failed to either convert a Shadow, or to destroy the one that was deemed not worthy.”

Any comfort that Test had felt moments before had faded. A deep and bottomless pit formed in his stomach.

“I thought you said there were only three of them left? That hardly constitutes an army.”

Lauren
laid her head down on the table with her cheek
rest
ing on
her
forearms
,
seemingly
numb to the
enormity
of the conversation taking place. “That’s right, I did say there were only three left—that I know of. It’s a big world, Test, and I’m willing to bet Isaac will pull out all of the stops for you.” She paused. “There’s Ikuhabe, too.
Though you fought well and drained him of his power, y
ou failed to kill him
. He will
more than likely
take Anil’s place.”

The image of the Native American flashed in Test’s mind. He’d nearly forgotten. Standing from the table, he walked to the counter and pressed his fists into the granite. “So what can we do?” he asked. “Do we hide the rest of our lives?”

With her head still resting on her arms, she replied casually. “You can’t hide. He’ll find you—us—somehow. It’s inevitable.”

Once more Test asked the question. “What can we do?”

Her tone suddenly more serious and dire than ever before, Lauren replied. “We get ready.”

Chapter 2

After being released from the hospital,
Nicole entered her apartment late in the afternoon. As she opened the door, the stench of her
roommate’s
trash took her breath away. At one time it bothered her, the left over fast food wrappers from a week prior, the empty beer bottles littering the floor, but not anymore.

Her hands trembled as she closed the door behind her and, as she double and triple checked the locks, she had a difficult time even focusing her vision. As she turned, she could see
Travis passed out on the couch;
his eyelids partially open revealing the bottom half his dilated pupils as his eyes rolled up into his head.

Nicole ha
d found Travis at a bar in down
town
Kansas City
. She was trashed and he was wasted, and from there, the mistakes snowballed. She refused to call him her boyfriend when in fact he was nothing more than a live in
dealer. Still, she’d done things for him in the recent months that, in another place and time, she would have found deplorable. These things were never done out of love or caring, but always with the end goal of getting another fix.

The first time Travis had ever injected her with heroin, she was terrified. Though he’d tried for a couple of weeks to get her to try it, she was able to resist; knowing that the drug had killed so many in the past was her salvation. Depression would be her demise.

After what seemed like an eternity of nights filled with nightmares about what
had
happened in
Lincoln
, and the love she’d lost with Test, her strength gave out. As the needle entered her arm for the first time, she didn’t care if it killed her or not. She just wanted t
he
pain to end. Death
didn’t come
that night, but a lapse in reality did
,
and from that point on, that was the only thing that drove her.

As she stepped carefully through the living room, she came to the end table where Travis’s paraphernalia rested. The top of the end table was made of g
lass which was covered in
scratch
es
from where razor blades had been used to chop up the meth or cocaine that was also a main stay of theirs. Sitting next to a spoon, a lighter, and a used syringe, was an empty baggie that she knew hours before contained the heroin she so desperately needed.
Tossing the baggie on top of Travis, she rolled her eyes and wiped the sweat from her forehead.

She began to rummage through the apartment, checking each of their normal hiding places for anything that could give her the escape that she so desperately needed.
Running out of options, s
he entered the bedroom, the only bedroom, and began to dig through the pile of clothes that was in the bottom of the closet. And then she saw it.

In the corner lay a tiny clear bag with a solitary pea sized white rock inside. It wasn’t supposed to be there, but from experience, she knew that Travis had failed to take everything out of his clothes from time to time, and this was far from the first time she’d discovered a treat on the closet floor. She never told him though; it was hers for the taking.

She took the small rock of meth out of the bag and set it on top of a cd case that was sitting on the dresser. She opened the case which housed a razor blade
,
intended for just such an occasion. Ideally, she would chop up the white powder until it was fine and powdery, but she didn’t have the patience to wait; she needed her fix. After breaking the rock down into smaller granules, small enough to inhale, she reached into her shoe and pulled out a ten dollar bill. She’d become smart in that in the past, when she’d use heavily, she’d wak
e up with all of her cash gone. She suspected Travis, but she had no way of knowing for sure.
She rolled the bill until it was a tight tube that would fit into her nostril and then leaned down to the line of powder.

As the meth entered her sinuses, the initial burn made her eyes tear up, and then she could taste the drug begin to drip down the back of her throat
as she swallowed
. “
Hurry up
,” she thought to herself.

She sat on the bed and waited. Meth treated her differently than it did most others. Instead of making her jittery or jumpy, it placed her in a mellow state, one that allowed her to sit and listen to a Mazzy Star album over and over again without the need for anything but a glass of water.

As the first si
gn of the drug began to make its
elf know
n
, her scalp tingling, she smiled as the sensation overtook her. The sun streamed through a crack in the curtains and, as she la
y
down on the bed, she pressed the play button on her cd alarm clock and waited
for the peace to over-take her.

The waiting was always the worst part. She tried to never let her high wear off, simply because of that fact. In between the misery of sobriety and the bliss that was the high, she found her mind falling back to the memories that haunted her.

She sat back up in the bed and stared into the mirror atop the dresser.
As she stared at her reflection,
she pulled her bangs back to reveal the scar on her forehead. The scar was an ever present reminder of graduation day in
Lincoln
, the day that, she felt, she should have died. As time had passed, she found herself growing bitter in a way, bitter that Test “saved” her and brought her back to life. In her mind, it would have been easier if
he
wouldn’t have found her.

Those thoughts always led to the regret she felt that she’d ever met him in the first place. She fantasized at how different her life could be if she’d not asked him over that late spring evening. If only she’d waited a couple of weeks, everything could be different. Still, whenever thinking of him, she was overcome with a sadness that they weren’t together. She did worry about what had become of him, if he was okay or even still alive.

Just as her mind began to delve deeper into the sadness, the effects of the meth appeared in full. A wave of comfort that began at her feet seemed to rush in waves up the length of her body. She closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulders, smiling into the mirror that she couldn’t see.

***

Thad Johnston curled up with his evening paper and a cup of coffee, trying his best to let the stress of
the day fade away. The broken down couch that he bought second hand allowed his body to conform to the cushions and
he let himself melt into the worn fibers
.

Being a teacher in
Kansas City
wasn’t easy, especially teaching high school
aged kids
. His parents had warned him, but after attending school for five years at
Kansas
State
University
, the memories
he held
of his high school career were good ones, and he couldn’t imagine that it could be as bad as they say. His parents weren’t exactly right, but they weren’t exactly wrong either. A good number of the kids were challenging, to say the least, but there were also a good number of students who were genuinely interested in learning. The main problem, he’d found, were the parents. Even a large number of the good kids came from dysfunctional homes. It made his job more difficult, and he’d thought about trying to find another gig in a different—better—part of town, but each time the ideological side of him kicked in with thoughts of helping these less fortunate kids get a good start on life.

Just as he unfolded the paper, he let out a harsh sigh at the remembrance of the insurance paperwork that he needed to fill out
for work
. He hesitated for a moment, briefly thinking to himself that he could just do it in the morning, but he knew all too well that he’d forget, just like he had the last three nights. Realizing that he couldn’t afford to procrastinate any longer, he threw his paper on the coffee table and forced the couch to release him.