Hunting Shadows (Shadow Series #3) (20 page)

Chapter Seven
teen

I bolted into a sitting position on my bed, the scream fading from my lips. Simon
was awake in an instant.

“What is it? Another vision?”

I shook my head as I felt my body start to tremble. I scrabbled for my cell phone
on the bedside table
at the same moment the door to my bed
room burst open.
Ryan rushed into
my room
looking alarmed
.

“What happened?” His eyes narrowed on Simon. “What did you do?”

Before they could get into an argument, I shut them up. “Stop! I don’t have time for
this shit right now!” I hit a button on my phone and put it up to my ear, praying
that she would answer. Fear seeped through every pore of my body when it
eventually went to voicemail.

“It’s Caitlin,” I said, my voice trembling. “Please call me as soon as
you get this. I’m sorry for
calling you in the middle of the night, but I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

I disconnected the call and then tried another number, my heart sinking when it went
straight to voicemail.

“What’s happening?” Simon asked
, gently but urgently.

“I don’t know how it happ
ened,”
I said, horror making me tremble
. “But the girl in my dream changed. It was Jenny! I swear it wasn’t her before!”

Simon said an expletive under his breath but his expression remained calm. “You just
tried to call her, right?”

“Yes
, but
she didn’t answer
. I tried Marcus too, but his
phone went straight to voicemail
.”

I jumped out of bed and started chan
ging quickly, not even noticing
that
I was stripping
in front of Ryan. All I could thi
nk about was finding Jenny
as soon as possible.
And I had a horrible feeling that I would find her at the pool.

Ryan and Simon seemed to be of the same mind. Simon quickly threw on some clothes
and Ryan had done the same when we walked
out
into the living room.

“Should we check downstairs first?” Simon asked. “Maybe she’s with Marcus.”

“No!” I said, feeling frantic. I knew she was at the pool. Every fiber of my being
was tellin
g me I needed to get
there
before it was too late. “She’s not there. She’s at the pool. I can just feel it.”

Simon and Ryan didn’t argue with me and we ran the whole way to the student gym. I
took no notice of how my heaving lungs were in pain from the cold air. All I could
think about was Jenny. Her bright personality and infectious laughter.
Please,
I begged in my mind,
please don’t let me be
too late.

My fear grew when I saw that the glass on the door to the i
ndoor pool had been smashed as if
someone
had
thrown
something through it, making it possible
to
reach inside and unlock it
. My suspicions
were confirmed when the door opened easily.

Jenny’s name was pounding in my mind
like a mantra
as
I ran inside. M
y
heart almost exploded from fear and adrenaline
when I saw the scene before me. Just as I had seen in my vision, Jenny was struggling
as the vardoger held her mercilessly underwater, waiting for her soul to expire
and leave her body
.

I immediately started gathering my energy, feeling the familiar thrum as it funneled
together. Both Simon and Ryan ran to Jenny but the moment they touched her they were
blasted back as if they had touched a live wire and had been electroc
uted. I was shocked
and confused
by what happened to them
, but I kept my concentration on my powers, my anger and f
ear making them even more potent
.

I shot out my gathered energy towards the vardoger
with so much force that I was thrown back onto the floor.
I felt relief course thro
ugh me when the vardoger
began to dissipate
, but it was short-lived when the vardoger
started to become solid again.

“What the fuck…” I trailed o
ff as I saw the vardoger turn
and rush towards me. I had no idea how it w
as able to survive the energy
I had crashed into it, but I immediately s
tarted gathering my powers
again. Panic
clawed at me
but I
forced myself to push my fear out
. I had t
o concentrate on destroying the
vardoger. I had to save Jenny’s life.

I felt the vardoger trying to push in
to
me but I ignored it. Pain was radiating throughout my body, setting every nerve-ending
on fire, but nothing mattered except my energy growing in
to
a
n
orb of fury and rage
.

I shot it out towards the vardoger with all the force I had inside me. I wanted to
sob with relief when it finally exploded and dissipated as if it had never existed.

The relief disappeared when I saw Ryan leaning over Jenny, giving her mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. I
scrambled up from the floor and
ran over, dropping to my knees in front of her. Each second seemed like an eternity
as I waited for Jenny to cough, to sputter and spit the water out of her lungs, but
she remained deathly silent.

“What’s happening?” I screamed, feeling myself start to s
hake. “I destroyed her vardoger!
She should be okay!”

Sim
on gathered me in his arms as we watched Ryan
try
ing
to save Jenny
’s life
. “She was in the water too long. She must
have been on the edge of her soul leaving her body
when her vardoger switched its attention to you.”

“
We have to call 9-1-1,” I said shakily
, scrambling for the phone in my pocket. “She needs an ambulance. She’ll be okay once
she gets to the hospital.”

Simon looked grim. “We already called. An ambulance is on its way.” He looked down
at Ryan who continued to work on Jenny. His voice was gentle when he spoke again.
“It’s not looking good.”

I felt numb as I watched Ryan
continue to
give her mouth-to-mouth. I heard the sounds of sirens but nothing seemed real to
me as I watched paramedics rush to her and check her vital signs. It seemed surreal
when I saw them put her on a stretcher but when they started to lift her into the
back of the ambulance, I broke out of my stupor.

“Wait!” I cried. “I need to go with her!”

I moved to hoist myself up into the ambulance but the param
edic stopped me. He was kind but
firm. “I’m sorry but you’ll have to drive separately to the hospital
. We have no time to waste. W
e’ll be using the sirens.”

I didn’t protest, not wanting to do anything to delay
them. I looked at Simon, feeling numb
when he put his arm around me. “Come on. Let’s go
back to the apartment to get a
car. We should tell the others too.”

I don’t know how I made the walk back home, but the moment we stepped in front of
Grant and Marcus’ apartment, my insides caved in. “What the hell do I say?” I whispered.
Simon wiped away the tears that I hadn’t realized were streaming down my face.

“Whatever you think is right,” he said gently.

Ryan was standing silently behind us and he didn’t have anything to add. I rang the
doorbell with a trembling finger, the moments as I waited for the door to open feeling
like a death sentence. I didn’t know whether
or not
to tell the truth with Marcus there. He knew nothing about vardogers and the l
ast thing I wanted to do was
pull him into this nightmare. That wouldn’t change what had happened to Jenny. That
wouldn’t determine whether she lived or died.

Marcus looked groggy as he opened the
door. “What’s going on?” he asked
tiredly. His gaze turned alert when he saw our expressions. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Jenny,” I said shakily. “She was just taken to the hospital by
an
ambulan
ce. She was found in the pool at
the student gym.”

Marcus blinked at me, as if he was trying to determine if this was a dream. He shook
his head with a frown
. “You must be mistaken. There’s
no reason for Jenny to be at the pool in the middle of the night.”

“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t stop myself from sobbing even
though I had told myself
to be strong. “It’s her. We need to go to the hospital.”

“What are you guys doing here in the middle of the night?” Grant had emerged from
his bedroom and was
squinting at us under the bright
lights of their living room. I stepped inside along with Simon and Ryan, past Marcus
who was just staring at us stupefied.

“Jenny’s had an accident,” I said simply, not wanting to go into it in detail. “She’s
on her way to the hospital in an ambulance.”

Grant’s face whitened but he glanced at Marcus before speaking. He seemed to choose
his next words carefully. “How did it happen? Do you know?”

“She was found in the pool,” Simon said when I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t
know what to say. “We can discuss this later. Right now we should leave for the hospital.”

Grant nodded, seeming to understand we couldn’t discuss anything in detail right now.
He went to go wake up Sarah, and I was
n’t
surprised by her reaction. There was a lot of sobbing and asking of questions, but
we shelved answering any of them until later.

We went to the hospital in two separat
e car
s; Simon
and I went in Ryan’
s
car and Gr
ant drove his with Marcus and Sarah
.

“What are you going to tell them?” Ryan asked from the backseat.
Simon was driving since he knew the way to the hospital.

“I don’t know,” I whispered, staring out the window. “That’s the least of my worries
right now.”

Ryan leaned forward. “You won’t just have Sarah, Grant and Marcus to answer to. The
police will question us too. We have to get our stories straight.”

I wanted to yell at him, to tell him to shut up. I didn’t want to think about any
of that when all I could think about was Jenny. But as much as I wanted to
, I didn’t. I could tell by
Simon’s white knuckles on the steering wheel that he was feeling the same thing, but
he also knew it was inevitable.

“You left her a message on her voicemail so we have to work that into the story,”
Ryan said. He was silent for a few moments before he spoke again. “The only way I
can think of spinning this is
by
saying you had a dream about Jenny drownin
g in the pool. We can say you had a premonition
. I’m sure the police have heard crazier things. You called her to see if she was
okay, but when she didn’t answer you got even more worried so you decided to check
the pool. Simon and I went with you because we didn’t want you to go on your own.
When we got there, she was already floating in the pool.”

I wanted to throw up as I
listened to Ryan, but I had no better story to give
. The thought of lying about the circumstances of what
had
happened to Jenny was repugnant, but they would think we were crazy if we told them
the truth. They would already think we were crazy with the story of the premonition,
but not enough to lock us up.

“Fine,” I whispered, not turning to look at him
. Simon glanced at me and then took my hand in his, gripping tight. I felt numb to
his touch. The only thing that felt real was the fear running through my body.

We were told to go to the waiting room when we arrived at the hospital. We sat there
nervously, silent until Marcus spoke up.

“We should call her parents,” he said, his voice strained. His eyes were red and I
wondered how much he had cried on the drive over to the hospital.

“What do we tell them?” Sarah asked in a panic. “We don’t even know yet if she’s alright.”

The doctor chose that moment to approach us. “Are you friends of Jenny McAllister?”

“Yes,” I said, bracing myself for the news.

“Does she have any family nearby?”