Deep Within The Shadows (The Superstition Series Book 1) (30 page)

Vivian whispered something under her breath, and a pool of black appeared at Juliet’s feet. A bulbous head rose from the center, followed by narrow shoulders and a wide, concave chest. His long arms hung to his knees and his legs spread thin and bowed.

Looking into that blank, blackish-gray face was like looking into the pit of pain and guilt she had suffered since she was thirteen. But he had no eyes, no heart to see what was inside her. She had known those feelings long enough. But the memory gripped her of how those on the street had screamed—hungry, furious. At the quick pinch of fear she stepped back. Would the emotional buffering Miranda and she had created hold? Even if it did, she still needed to control her emotions.

She glanced toward Miranda to find her sister facing a similar creature, and standing protectively between it and Caleb. Concern choked her, and she turned away. If she watched too long, she’d be so frightened for Miranda it might set the thing off. She had to get her own emotions under control. She reached for the moment of peace during meditation and her feelings leveled out.

The creatures swayed from side to side, waiting for either a signal from Vivian or for Juliet’s emotions to rise.

“You hired the men who killed Tanner. They beat him, beat him until he couldn’t stand or defend himself. Then stomped him. Kicked him. He was one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever known, and they killed him. You created the situation that caused his death. And for what?”

“I never meant for him to die.” For the first time Juliet saw remorse, but it quickly passed, to be overpowered by her Vivian’s rage. “I just wanted rid of you. He was with you everywhere. He walked you home every night. He ate dinner at your apartment. Spent the night there.
With you
.” Her voice rose with her rage. “If you had left him alone, he’d still be here. We were meant to be together.”

“If you’d loved him enough to walk away, he’d still be alive. That’s what love is Vivian. Sacrifice.”

She glanced at Miranda for a brief moment. “I’m going to show you what you did, Vivian. What you took from us all.” Juliet’s hand shook as she gestured to the empty area before her. Her throat tightened with grief, and she quickly shut down her pain. She closed her eyes, pulled the memories from her, and set them free, producing more than just a movie screen. The room was filled with a three-dimensional image of what had taken place on the street that night. Juliet turned her face away to keep from watching. Every moment was imprinted on her psyche.

A quick moment of Tanner laughing, watching television with his feet propped on the coffee table, reaching out a hand to grasp hers, was followed by the attack. The meaty thuds and grunts were animalistic as Abbott, hyped up on cocaine, punched, kicked and stomped Tanner into unconsciousness while Porter held her by the hair and twisted her arm behind her back until he dislocated her shoulder. She screamed in pain. Her anger and fear had screamed with it. His high-pitched squeals when she set him on fire echoed through the room. Abbott ran to him and beat the flames with his hands, so hyped on drugs he didn’t feel the pain. The two ran back to their car and peeled away.

Tanner’s labored breathing filled the room, his broken ribs and punctured lungs making it sound soupy as blood rushed in to drown him.

“This is what you took from us, Vivian. What you did. What you caused.”

Vivian’s face was pasty white when she approached the image and stood over Tanner.

Justin’s voice rose, high-pitched and desperate, as he twisted and turned to try to escape Juliet’s tether above them. “Vivian, don’t listen to her. It wasn’t you, it was them, and we killed them. They’re dead now.” His face twisted and he balled his fist.

A glowing orb of power shot down at Miranda, and she threw up an arm and a shield against it, its impact spreading out, dissipated by her defense. She yelped in pain as some of the residual energy showered blue down on her, and she leapt away. With an angry glare at Justin above her, she thrust a hand out and the energy pooled in her palm.

Juliet released her spell, and he hurtled toward the floor just as Caleb had done. He caught himself feet from the hard tile, but stumbled as he found his footing. Miranda hit him in the back of the head with his own ball-shaped energy. He tumbled forward into a slithering stream of snakes.

He yelped and surged to his feet.

Vivian shouted,
“Umbra exsisto hic.”
Black pools filled the tiled floor, so dense only inches of space remained between them. Shadow creatures struggled up out of the depths from the center of each one.

Miranda kicked the book at her feet out of the way and it slid forward, the pages opening in a flutter. She faced off with the creature before her.

The fifty or more shadows around them screamed in unison. Juliet flinched and covered her ears.

“Look at him, Vivian.” Juliet yelled when their screams subsided. “What would you say to Tanner now? I’m sorry? What good would it do? He’s dead. You’ll never have him. And he’ll never be able to love you. He’ll never be able to love anyone.”

“Shut up,” Justin shouted, his features twisted with fear and rage. The shadows around him skimmed closer, hemming him in. “She’s doing to you what you were supposed to do to her, Suzette. She’s the one who should feel guilty, she’s the one who caused his death.”

Vivian moved closer to Tanner’s image. “He would have loved me if you hadn’t taken him.” Her eyes began to glow with emotion. For a moment Juliet thought she saw tears glaze the woman’s eyes. She jerked around to face the creatures standing sentinel behind her. “Kill them! Kill them both!”

Everything went still, silent. The shadows wove back and forth, sightless, seeking emotion. Juliet turned to look at Miranda and raised a fist in a signal to hold on. She braced herself for their attack. Would anything she tried work to fight them off? They turned en masse toward Miranda, and her heart skipped a beat. “No!” The word escaped her in a whisper. She stumbled backwards, up two stairs, and realized they weren’t going for Miranda, but Justin.

He screamed as two of the creatures locked onto his arms. His panic drew others blindly, hungrily.

Vivian’s shout was just as panicked. “No! No! Not him—them!” She pointed toward Juliet and Miranda, but the creatures were blind to all but emotion. “Not him!” She shoved her way through the sea of black, and for a moment she was almost obscured. They couldn’t attack her, she was their creator, but Justin was just another unprotected source of emotion they could drain to feed their hunger.

Juliet slipped along the wall behind the creatures, and, reaching Miranda, gripped her hand. “We have to do it now. While they have him.”

They clasped hands and gathered as much energy as they could. A full moon beamed down through the panes overhead.

While she spoke in Latin, Miranda spoke the words in English.

“From characters inside a book you began.

To characters you will end.

Into the book you must all descend.”

A heavy whistling sound filled the room as air began to drag and pull at their clothing. The pages of the book Miranda had kicked whipped back and forth. The first shadow reached it and was sucked into its pages, then the next. The snakes Vivian had called forth streamed through the air, their hisses lost in the cry of the wind, their tails a lash that could maim or blind.

With each creature’s disappearance the speed with which the next was sucked in increased. The two who held Justin hostage were dragged forward, their bodies elongating as they sought to continue feeding off his emotions and kill him. One wrenched its hand free of the vacuum’s pull and plunged it into his chest.

Justine’s scream was an inhuman warble wracked with torment. Vivian leaped forward and tore the thing’s grip from him and attempted to cover his body with her own.

The wind ripped at Juliet’s clothing, flinging her ponytail over her shoulder and into her eyes making them sting. Miranda shook head to clear her own vision. “We have to end it.”

“For your own good, for others’ safety,

You will be locked away for all eternity.”

One of the shadows lost its grip and was pulled away, but the other clung like a tick, dragging Justin with it. Creature and man’s feet disappeared into pages while Justin’s anguished scream filled the cavernous space.

Vivian, realizing the danger, tried to pry his fingers loose from her arm and roll away. Her teeth clenched in a grimace as his fingernails dug into her arm, leaving bloody trails. He threw an arm around her neck.

“Don’t let me go, Suzette,” he cried. Desperate and beyond panic, he clung to her. His torso disappeared until only his head and arm remained free. Vivian braced her hands on the floor and heaved back to either pull him free or break his grip. A long, grayish-black arm extended from the pages then, its huge hand tangling in Vivian’s hair, pulling her off balance until she fell headfirst into the book, her feet kicking like someone plunged into deep water, struggling to surface.

Caleb’s protective bubble slid forward, heading for Vivian’s scissoring legs.

The vortex they’d created was intensifying and was about to suck him in! Juliet tore her hands free. “Get him.” Her tennis shoes squeaked as she twisted toward the book. Miranda released the bubble and nearly collided with her as she rushed forward.

Vivian’s shriek echoed as she was sucked all the way down into the pages. Juliet dove head-first, using her body to block Caleb’s momentum, and his greater weight struck her from behind, shoving her forward. Her arm sank elbow-deep into the pages and she gasped as something gripped her wrist and pulled hard.

Fingers grabbed the waistband of her jeans and wrenched her back. A large foot encased in a black dress shoe kicked the book closed and stomped on it. The immediate silence lay poised like the moment following a laugh. She looked up at Hollis Garr. He stood on the cover of the book with all his weight.

“Thanks.”

He grinned so hugely his wrinkles had wrinkles. “My pleasure.” He carefully scooped up the book and deposited it into the lead-lined box he’d shown up with earlier. There was a satisfying click as he locked it. “The council will be keeping this.”

Juliet turned, and found herself folded close in Chase’s arms. “I’ve heard of losing yourself in a good book, but you damn near took it too far, Juliet.” Still panting from the near miss, she threw her arms around him and rested against his broad chest. His heart beat hard beneath her ear. His arms tightened around her.

“Juliet.” Miranda’s voice broke on a sob.

No. This couldn’t end in tragedy. They’d come too far in three days to have it end badly. She sat up to look past Chase’s arm to Miranda. She cradled Caleb’s head tenderly in her lap, tears streaming down her face.

“No.” After everything they’d been through, if Caleb were to die…Juliet pushed free of Chase’s embrace. The hard tile floor bit into her knees as she crawled to her sister. She swept her gaze over Caleb’s battered features.

“He won’t wake up,” Miranda breathed.

He lay still, the rise and fall of his chest shallow but regular.

Exhaustion weighted Juliet’s limbs. The huge expenditure of power had drained their resources. If he was badly injured, they might not be able to heal him.

Her hand shook as she extended her palm over him and drew a meager healing power to her. She slowly swept it over Caleb in search of an injury. The bruises on his face drained some of it away and she paused there a moment, then moved down over her chest, stomach and his lower limbs to his knees.

“It isn’t an injury that’s keeping him asleep. And I don’t sense any drugs.”

“It’s a spell?” Miranda’s hand flew to her throat. “Since Vivian created it, we may not be able to break it.”

“You just sucked two psychotic witches into a book they were obsessed with…” Chase paused, then grimaced.

“What is it?” Juliet asked.

“It sounds corny as hell, but maybe Vivian put Caleb to sleep like Sleeping Beauty.”

A picture of Vivian holding a book about that fairy tale flashed through her mind. Juliet could picture the sadistic pleasure the woman would have gotten when she kissed Caleb awake only to tell him she’d killed the woman he loved.

Miranda had nothing to lose. “Kiss him,” she urged.

The hope and love she read in Miranda’s face as she gazed lovingly at her man brought a quick rush of tears. Miranda eased his head off her lap and curled her legs beneath her. Holding her hair back away from his face she bent and pressed her lips to his.

A moment then two passed, and she kissed him again. “Caleb, please wake up.”

Caleb’s breath hitched, and one of his hands twitched.

Juliet’s hope latched on and clung, waiting for a reason to rejoice. Chase took a step closer and rested his hand on her shoulder. She reached for it and gripped his fingers tight.

Caleb’s lids rose and he blinked, perhaps to clear his vision. His smile was something special. “Hey, Mandy.” He sat up enough to pull her close, and two clung together. Without releasing her he looked around the room. “Wow, look at that mess.”

Juliet took in the destruction. Papers were strewn around like a ticker tape parade had driven through, hundreds of books littered the floor, and the two of them looked a little disheveled.

Caleb smoothed Miranda’s hair from his face. “What did I miss?”