Secondhand Shadow

CHAPTER 2-1

CHAPTER 2BRIGHT ONE

NAOMI

Wonder Tummy gave me weird dreams from day one. I’d always had nightmares when I was stressed, anyway, not that being pregnant and homeless and hallucinating could possibly be stressful. I woke up at four-thirty a.m., some twelve hours after Damon did not get in the elevator with me, and took my customary several seconds to figure out where I was and what was real. Lately the ol’ psyche’s favorite nocturnal torment was kittens. Kittens, of course, are wonderful—once they have fur and ears and look like kittens. My cat Luna had kittens when I was fourteen, and it was disgusting. The ones in my dream were even worse. Slimy pink squirming things, crying piteously, that I knew I ought to help and love but I only wanted to run far away from them. And they were coming out of me.

The school counselors would just love that one.

But for once that wasn’t the dream that left me gasping at the ceiling in the wee hours of the morning, wondering if I’d died and gone to hell. No, this little gem of nocturnal bizarrery involved a Strider-like hallucination with interestingly long hair and green eyes that burned.

I’ve gotta get some air. I couldn’t sleep while Carmen was snoring on the other side of the parchment anyway.

Getting off the couch was both difficult and loud, but Carmen’s snores never faltered. I pulled her blue bathrobe off a dining room chair and stepped outside. It was even darker than I expected, which was nice. I felt like skulking about in the dark for a while. It’s not often that Third Trimester gets to skulk. It was a little chilly, but that was all right, too. It would clear my head. I tied the bathrobe around me, wriggled my swollen toes into flip-flops, and waded out into the wet grass, toward the road where a streetlamp made an amber halo against the sky.

I hadn’t dreamed about any guy but Tyler in… ever. Not since junior high, anyway. Not that dream-Damon and I had been… doing anything, exactly. Actually, I couldn’t remember what we’d been doing, only that he was there, and that I liked him being there. There was fire… a fireplace? Maybe he was preparing to throw me in it.

“You’re out late. Or early.”

I jumped, no small feat with a belly the size of mine. A man was standing by the streetlamp—surely he hadn’t been there earlier—and for a moment I thought it was Damon. It wasn’t. His hair wasn’t dark enough, or long enough, and he was too brawny.

But there was still some indefinable resemblance between them.

Yeah. They’re both creepy. Time to go.

I turned away, avoiding eye contact.

“Wait,” he said, and stepped in front of me. “I need your help.”

He certainly needed someone’s help. He looked like he hadn’t changed clothes or brushed his hair in days, or eaten either. That was the resemblance to Damon—the same pale, starved look, the same aura of electrocharged despair.

Am I hallucinating again? The last one was cuter.

I did not like the way he was looking at me. Call me blasphemous, but it reminded me of the crowds who would gather around Christ, each desperate to touch him just once and be healed, speak to him just once and be saved.

“So bright,” he whispered. “So bright.” He reached a hand toward me.

I jumped back. “Don’t touch me.” I sound scared. Am I scared? My legs are shaking, I must be…

“Where’s your shadow, bright one?”

I dodged his hand again. It wasn’t easy; although he moved slowly, I couldn’t seem to move much faster. Like those dreams where you’re trying to run and your legs just… won’t… move…

Maybe this is a dream. Just another dream.

“Where’s your shadow?” he asked again. “He must be very new at this, not to recognize what I am.” His smile was sharp with self-loathing.

“And what are you, exactly?” My voice shook.

“Kathair,” he said dreamily. “Destroyer. Destroyed. But you… you could help me… you have to help me…”

I didn’t dodge in time; he grabbed my arm. I tried to jerk away, and accidentally looked into his eyes.

Mistake. Like a bird hypnotized by a snake, I couldn’t move. They weren’t the eyes of a religious pilgrim. They were the eyes of a child in a bombed-out city, wandering through the smoke-blackened bones of his home, too empty to cry.

“Let me go.” It was hard to speak.

“No.”

“Let me go.”

“Not yet.”

Something about that vague, self-hating smile… something was wrong… his teeth…

They were, every one, sharp as needles.

The paralysis broke. “Let me go let me go let me go!”

With a hiss like a striking snake, he threw me against the streetlamp and sank his teeth into my throat.

And was thrown off by a dark snarling form like a panther. They hit the ground together a few feet away, and I tried to run, but somehow I was on my knees instead, pressing a hand to the hot stinging place on my throat where blood streamed between my fingers.

Baby. I die baby dies. No dying.

Blood pattered to the sidewalk, bright in the amber light.

“Peter!” cried one of the voices from the tangle of snarls and teeth. The voice was familiar. “Peter, stop!”

Another one that looked like Damon. I blinked. It was Damon.

“Where’s Mariposa?” Damon had the other man—Peter, I assumed—pinned to the ground. Dark lines of blood crossed Damon’s right cheek, and seeped from similar tears in his shirt. Were they from teeth?

“Mariposa’s gone,” Peter whispered. I could barely hear him. “Faded. Ashes in my hands. I couldn’t stop her.” His voice broke. “I couldn’t stop her.”

Damon swore, then glanced at me. I could almost feel his eyes focus on the blood trickling between my fingers. He was suddenly very still.

Peter wasn’t. He broke Damon’s hold and—disappeared.

Before I could wonder where he’d gone, he was on me, and I screamed, but Damon pulled him off before his teeth could touch me again.

“Mine!” Damon snarled, crouching between me and Peter. “Mine, Peter. And it wouldn’t help anyway. You know that.”

“She’s different.” Tears were mixing with the blood on Peter’s face. My blood. “She’s like Carly. I need it.”

“She’s not Carly. It won’t help you.”

“I need it!” He lunged again.

It was like being in the middle of a dogfight, or rather a catfight, what with all the hissing. I wanted to run but my legs wouldn’t hold me. I curled up around Wonder Tummy and prayed, hard and incomprehensibly. I couldn’t breathe, but I figured it was more from my hunched position than anything else. The flow of blood from my neck had slowed. No dying. Good girl.

“Don’t make me kill you. Please, Peter, please don’t make me kill you!”

Quiet fell for a moment, and I dared to glance up. Peter was pinned again, on his stomach this time, and gasping carefully against the knife Damon held to his throat. Damon was panting, too, and had a new bloodstain streaming from his shoulder.

Damon glanced up at me again, and something frantic flickered across his face, but he turned back to Peter. “Come back to the Orphanage with me. We’ll help you.”

“Can’t help me,” Peter gasped. Again I could barely hear him, but something in his voice was more lucid than it had been so far. “I’m pretty far gone, Damon. You may have noticed.”

“You haven’t hurt…” He glanced at me again. “You haven’t killed anyone, Peter. It’s not too late.”

He shook his head. “Yesterday. In Montana. I didn’t mean to. But I did.”

Damon closed his eyes and began cursing in a steady, deliberate stream.

“I would have killed her tonight,” Peter said. “It was like a dream. I couldn’t stop.”

I blinked hard, but it wasn’t my eyes. He really was getting blurry around the edges.

“Don’t,” Damon said, pleading.

“You can’t save ‘em all, Damon.” He smiled.

His edges grew softer and softer. For a second I thought I could see through him.

And then he was gone, and Damon was kneeling on a pile of torn clothing, and a handful of ashy dust that was already scattering in the breeze.

“No, Peter,” Damon said, and slammed his fists against the concrete. His voice sank to a whisper. “No.”

Silence. There were lights on in some of the nearby apartments. I wondered if anyone had called the police. The darkness had turned to watery pre-dawn grey, and I could see the dark, wet patches on Damon’s clothes slowly spreading. I crawled a few feet toward him. “Damon?”

He didn’t look up, but I could feel somehow that his attention had focused on me, like sunlight through a magnifying glass. After a moment, he spoke, voice low and hoarse. “Are you all right?”

“I’m bleeding,” I said, “but I guess he missed the artery. You—you’re bleeding pretty bad.”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “I need… I need to get us to my father.”

My brain utterly rejected the idea of showing up on my professor’s doorstep in a bloody bathrobe, not to mention the stupidity of going anywhere with this only-slightly-less-creepy-than-Peter person. I had suspended reality for the time being, to make room for fanged monsters who turned to dust, but that didn’t mean I had suspended common sense.

“I’ll be just fine here,” I said. “We have bandages and stuff. But I can call your father to come get you.”

“No. I need… to get to him as soon as possible. And you have to come with me.”

“No, I really don’t.” I lurched to my feet, stumbled, and would have fallen, but Damon caught my arm. Never mind how he got to his feet that quickly.

“Please,” he said. “I know how strange this must be for you. And it’s going to get stranger. But I need you with me. I can’t be away from you right now. I’ll explain everything. Just… please come with me.”

His eyes were fully as magnetic as Peter’s. More. And his hand around my arm, which should have been alarming, was weirdly comforting. I felt myself nodding without deciding to do any such thing.

Damon sighed shaky relief. “Good. Now… now things get very strange. Don’t panic. I’m not going to let any harm come to you.” His hand around my arm tightened. “Whatever you do, don’t… let me bite you.” He twitched an embarrassed sort of smile, as if aware of how insane he sounded. “Tell me to stop. I’ll be able to stop if you tell me.”

I opened my mouth to tell him I was staying here after all and he could go be crazy elsewhere, but the words died when he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me, as gently as if I were a child, one hand tucking my head under his chin.

I had time to push him away. I didn’t. Instead I fought not to hug him back. I may have failed.

“Don’t panic,” he said again.

And then I did try to push him away because something was pressing around me, all around like water, like the pressure at the bottom of the ocean, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I was being flattened, I was seven months pregnant and I was being flattened—

The air changed and I could breathe again. I shoved him away but he was already stepping back. I tried to run back to the apartment but I stumbled on the edge of a rug.

What?

We weren’t on the sidewalk outside the apartment anymore. We were in a dim, spacious room with a leather couch, a green recliner, a widescreen TV and lots of bookshelves. It seemed to be tilting around me and I wondered if I was about to faint.

Damon fell against the back of the couch, gasping. I would not have thought he could get much paler, but he had. And he was still bleeding.

“D-Dr. DiNovi,” I called. Surely we were at Damon’s father’s house. How we got here, I would think about later. Way to go, Scarlett O’Hara. Think about it tomorrow. “Dr. DiNovi!”

There was a noise from down a hallway to my right. Even as I turned toward it, a woman stepped out of the shadows to my left.

“Gabriel!” she cried, and ran toward Damon in a streak of dark hair and filmy white gown. “Frank! Come quickly!” Her eyes went wide as she noticed me, but she did not move from Damon’s side. “Frank!” she called again.