Fear's Touch: A Darkworld Novella (The Darkworld Series) (3 page)

Shadow-beast,
I thought.

I’d never seen one, but during one of our talks my parents had given me a pretty thorough explanation. Shadow-beasts were like wild animals gone over to the Dark Side. Nasty and scary, but not demons. I could kill it…my hand went to my pocket again. Fire. I’d done it a hundred times—for lack of anything better to do over summer—but using it in public would supposedly bring the
venators,
that is, members of the Magic Police
,
swarming down on me.

The creature roared. I winced, my eardrums protesting. Okay, maybe I wasn’t feeling too brave, after all. But that girl was staring at me helplessly.
Gods, what do I do?

The girl made my decision for me. As the beast stalked toward her, its shadowy body weaving through the traffic, she bolted for the bus shelter. Right at me.

Oh, hell.

Before I could even think about what to do, she’d thrown herself behind me.

Great. Now, I’m the crazy psycho-beast’s target.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “Please. You can see it. Help me.”

I’m new to this, you know.
But I drew in a breath and pulled out the Japanese fan all the same. Might as well look like I knew what I was doing.

By the bus stop, people gathered, huddled under umbrellas or hurried down the streets and into shops to avoid the rain. No one even looked at the
thing
approaching us. Worse, it wasn’t like we could call for help without being deemed insane.

There was
one
thing I knew how to do, though. Time to pull out the trick Mum and Dad had taught me—and make us almost-invisible.

Concentrate,
I told myself. My connection to the Darkworld was always there; it never went away. I just had to concentrate on the chill coming from the shadow-beast, that deep, deep coldness that cut right to the bone.
Grab the shadows. Pull them around
you, imagine it like a cloak.
Shadow-beasts were weak. They couldn’t see through low-level Influence—a mind-trick that also worked on people. Well, non-magic-users. If anything, it’d stop the stares. We’d fade into the background, become invisible to anyone except sorcerers and demons. The monster would lose its targets.

Not like that was a comforting thought at the moment. I knew I could rock the badass look, but did I actually know what I was doing? Hell, no. And I didn’t much fancy the idea of letting this girl get hurt because I’d given her the impression I knew how to fight this thing.

Okay. Time for action.

I mentally called the shadows toward me—one thing I’d got the knack of pretty quickly, even if it had freaked me out almost as much as the demon had, the sight of every shadow in the room zooming over to me as though I’d activated some kind of shadow-sucking hoover. Right now, though, I felt a spasm of relief when dark, swirling shadows came out from under cars and people, swarming over to me in one motion. I flicked my hand up, still holding the fan, and the shadows complied, forming a wall between us and the shadow-beast.

The monster paused, as if puzzled that its prey had vanished.
Ha. Nice try.

I tried not to think about how the shield was depending on me to stay linked up to the Darkworld as long as I wanted it to stay there. It dragged at me, like the sleepiness after pulling an all-nighter, and I staggered to the side, suddenly feeling less like a badass and more like I wanted my bed.

Then I spotted two other people on the other side of the road, just standing there. From the way their gazes were fixed forward, on the shadow-beast, I knew they could see it.

From their military-type navy blue uniforms, I knew they belonged to the secret group, the Venantium. Mum and Dad had described them to me enough times.

Oh, hell.
So much for avoiding attention. Worse, one of them had looked up from the shadow-beast—right at the girl and me. Even from the other side of the road, I saw his brow furrow and his eyes narrow, like he was scrutinising me for something.

Then the shield dropped.

Crap. I’d let my concentration waver, and now, we were exposed. The girl behind me let out a whimper of fear.

But the two guys in blue were moving forward, stealthily. One clapped his hands; the sound echoed, but no passers-by looked in his direction. I knew what they were doing. Now that my own pathetic attempt at a shield was gone, I could see they each wore one of their own. Not the same as my shield, but subtler, harder to see unless you were looking closely.

Except the thing was, no one
could
look closely, thanks to their using Influence.

Mum had told me the
venators
relied on Influence because it meant they could sneak around in their ridiculous uniforms without standing out. They also liked to cloak things in Influence so they appeared different to how they actually were. For instance, their headquarters was hidden underground, but they had a trick spell on the entrance—inside a
tomb
, seriously—to make people who entered forget how exactly they’d ended up underground.

I guessed they were too curious about why two randomers were being targeted by Mr. Ugly Beast to care we could also see
them.
At least, that’s what thought flashed through my head before the panic of having a monster staring me in the face kicked in again.

The two guys moved almost at the same time. Shadows moved with them, descending on the shadow-beast in a wall of darkness. Hell, that was way more impressive than the feeble shield I’d conjured.

Darkness slammed down on the beast like a waterfall. It let out this horrible
scream,
an otherworldly howl that turned my legs to jelly. Then the darkness broke apart, and the monster was gone.

Gone. Nothing there, just an ordinary street. Even the people driving on the road didn’t appear to have seen anything unusual.

God, I envied them.

Oh, crap.
The two guys were walking toward us.

he girl let out a choked noise, peeking out from behind the bus shelter.

“Is it gone?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

But we had bigger problems: the two
venator
guys. One had a shaved head that made him look like a motorcycle gang reject; the other was a foot shorter and had ridiculously thick eyebrows, like nature had seriously screwed him over.

I didn’t really want to mess with the first guy.

“Who,” he demanded, stalking over to us, “are you?”

“I’m Claudia,” I said.

A couple of people glanced over.
Crap—
no one could see the guys. It would look like we were talking to ourselves.

So much for not being the freak.

“This way,” the first guy said, beckoning us, as though the same thought had occurred to him. His friend had already found a nice alleyway for us to hide in.

I shook my head. “No way,” I muttered. Dead in an alley was not how I wanted my first day at university to end.

But the other girl was following them. “They won’t hurt us.”

Dammit.
Despite every instinct telling me to ignore it, curiosity won out. I abandoned my suitcase and went after her, the guy giving me the evils until we were out of earshot of the other people waiting at the bus stop.

“Who are you?” Biker Guy asked again.

“I’m Berenice,” said the girl, tossing her hair over her shoulder. Now that she no longer looked shit-scared, I realized she was stunning. Like model-worthy stunning. Her dark curly hair had that kind of natural shine you saw on adverts for hair products, and though she wore only a plain black jumper and skirt, she managed to look like she was on her way to a photo shoot.

Holy hell, I was jealous. And was she flirting with Biker Guy?

She batted her eyelashes at him. “Thanks for saving us.”

Yep, definitely flirting. Ordinarily, I’d have switched on the charm, but next to her, I was a faceless nobody. And soaking wet from standing in the rain. Great.

“I could have taken them,” I muttered, as the guy looked down at her, kind of coldly. Well, he did work for the Venantium, and in their eyes, we’d probably broken their rules just by
looking
at the shadow-beast.

“You aren’t registered, are you?” Strangely, he didn’t give the same cold look to me. Hey, maybe I
could
charm him into not telling on me to his bosses.

I shook my head, managing to get in a Berenice-like hair toss at the same time.

She noticed and gave me a dagger-stare.
Whoa,
that’s not friendly
.

Ignoring the hostility coming off her in waves, I smiled up at the guy. “I didn’t think
venators
were so young. Or handsome.”

Lame, as far as pickup lines go, but I had the feeling these weren’t the kind of guys who had girls swarming after them…well, they walked around half-invisible, for one thing.

The other guy was starting to look pissed. I supposed I didn’t blame him, seeing as his friend had monopolized all the female attention.

Biker Guy, however, relaxed. “Sorry I scared you. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.” He looked from me to Berenice. “Did either of you see who summoned that shadow-beast?”

My heart missed a beat.
He’s not blaming us,
I thought. Maybe the Magic Police weren’t as intense as I’d been warned.

I shook my head, and so did Berenice.

“N-no,” she said, shuddering. “It just jumped out of an alley and came at me. I ran away.”

“And you just happened to be standing there?’ said the other guy, one intense eyebrow raised at me.

“Yeah, I frequently go out looking for monsters. That’s why I was at the bus stop with my suitcase, at the time the
bus to university
is supposed to arrive.” The sarcasm practically dripped from my tongue.

“You’re an unregistered magic-user,” snapped the other guy. “Both of you are, in fact. Nine times out of ten that means one of you summoned it.”

I blinked. “And why would I do that?”
Pretend ignorance…
not hard when I didn’t get why someone
would
summon a monster like that. Supposedly, for the magical boost. I didn’t buy it.

“I don’t know. Why would you?”

“That’s enough,” said Biker Guy. “Come on, they’re just kids.”

“Hey!” said Berenice.

“And you’re not?” I said.

“Touché.” He frowned at me, as though puzzling me out. “You’re both new to town, right?”

“Yeah.”

Berenice just nodded.

“You’ve had your connection to the Darkworld for…” He looked me over. “A few months.”

“How’d you know that?”

“There are ways of telling. You aren’t scared witless, which means someone must have given you information. That doesn’t leave many options other than—”

“If you’d give us the chance to explain,” said Berenice.

“You have family in the Venantium,” said the other guy, rather accusingly. “Both of you. Right?”

“My parents used to be, yeah,” I said.

“Thought so.” Biker Guy nodded. “But you…” He turned to Berenice. “You’ve been using magic a long while. Two years or more. Earlier than most.”

“Shut it,” Berenice snapped, taking me by surprise with her vehemence.