Shadow Play: (2 page)

Ellie glanced over with a tight smile. Cam hadn’t had time to get a haircut, so his sandy brown hair looked a little grown-out, like when she’d first met him. His green eyes, as always, made her heart flutter.

They’d been a couple for four months now, not a day of it easy. The fact that they worked together for the Segue Institute helped some, but this assignment would be decidedly worse than her usual work there. Soon they would attempt to put her training to use. And she was nowhere near ready.

She wouldn’t think about that now.

Even from this height, she could make out soldiers surrounding the waterfall and research center. Cam squeezed her hand in comfort. She didn’t like to be around other people. She’d lived as a shut-in most of her life, her only companion her shadow, her dark self, who at the moment was straining to be free of Ellie’s iron grip. Her shadow was the embodiment of her id, her most primal urges, and if she released it, who knows what mayhem she would create.

Fear. Panic. Fight or flight was charging her shadow now, and battering Ellie inside as she attempted to control the feelings. Why did she always have to fight herself?

No,
Ellie told herself.
Not now.

A barrier had been set up around the falls to block the view of news helicopters and photographers dug into the surrounding wilderness. Poles driven deep into the earth held a screen, while allowing the water to pass below. Of course, images of the waterfall had already appeared on the Web, some even capturing the young boy who’d crossed before he’d disappeared from sight entirely. That had been two days ago.

The helicopter lowered onto a flat segment of red ground, to the side of which Ellie spotted two figures awaiting their arrival.

Her chest tightened, the feeling made worse by the loud beating of the helicopter’s rotors. The impulse to let loose her shadow grew stronger. Her shadow could protect her.

Protect! Yes, danger!

But she held it back. As always, lashing her shadow to her flesh in the face of a new situation felt like walking into fire. Her nerves burned at the thought of her impending exposure to the eyes and consideration of strangers. How did normal people stand this day in, day out?

No one except Cam knew her for the freak she was, but her panic always remained, just under her skin.

Cam climbed out behind her, and together they jogged through the whipping air toward their welcoming party, except the expressions on the two men weren’t so welcoming.

Her shadow bucked within her.

“Dr. Cameron Kalamos,” Cam shouted, holding out his hand. His hair whipped in the wind. “And this is my associate, Specialist Eleanor Russo.”

Specialist meant any number of things at Segue.

They both got their hands shaken as they were introduced to Dr. Desmond Grant, short, bald, paunchy, and Colonel Mike Langer, a tall, fit man with a round face and short forehead.

“This way,” the colonel beckoned, and they started down a path toward the mobile offices.

Flecks of dirt stung Ellie’s eyes. On the gusts of battered air, she could smell the falls now, fresh with a sensuous under scent that reminded her of sex, which made obvious what she’d had on her mind for the past four months with Cam. She’d been warned that Twilight tempted and tormented each person differently. This was going to be a problem. Her shadow’s struggles morphed into a dark writhe of desire.

Oh, hell. Not that either. Work.

Her shadow strained with impatience.

This mission was as good as doomed.

Ellie skidded on loose ground, and Cam caught her by the elbow. “Easy.” She knew he also referred to her internal struggle.

She’d only had a short time to practice controlling her shadow, with varied success. She could hold it, except when stressed by strong emotion. When her shadow was allowed to roam, Ellie could give it simple commands, but they were often overridden by the shadow’s curiosity about something else. And in the bedroom, at night with Cam, her control over her shadow was nonexistent. Hence, the damning scent of the waterfall.

“Give it time,” he always said.

Time. Right. But really, her hopes had narrowed to one: She didn’t want to mess up their first field assignment, not with a child’s life in the balance. It was time to get her shadow under control.

They were led to the screen concealing the falls, which was guarded by soldiers. A door in the curtain was opened so they could enter the immediate area of the waterfall. Whereas the mobile research structure outside had a sense of movement and determined industry, the screened area inside was empty of personnel and almost peaceful with the constant rush of water. Cameras had been positioned to monitor the falls from all sides.

Ellie, Cam, and their hosts stood behind the sheet of crystalline water, the ground damp with spray. A workstation with a strange apparatus had been erected on a dry patch. Beyond, the flow had washed out the trail and deluged the red earth. A few trees hung on, their branches wavering.

Col. Langer gestured toward the water. “We’ve had samples sent out, but so far the results come back H
₂
O.”

Twilight, the Otherworld, wavered beyond the surface. The realm was rich in deep color, the shadows patterned with movement. Raw magic seeped into every branch and turn of leaf. She longed for this place, her dark self reaching, though passing
between
typically meant death. There was conflicting information as to exactly where the vortex was located, but it was safe to say, probably around about … here.

Cam ranged around to get a different vantage. “Any new sightings of the boy?”

Twilight was also a realm of madness. If the boy still lived, he would either be trapped in a dream or a nightmare, no longer sensible of the mortal world.

“His mother said he stepped out of sight at 1400 hours on Saturday,” Col. Langer answered. “No visual since.”

Ellie did the math. Forty-seven hours. The kid’s chances weren’t good. Maybe if they’d gotten here sooner. Still, she was determined to try.

“So what do you think you can do that we haven’t already?”

She turned at Dr. Grant’s question, as did the others. She’d almost forgotten he was there.

“This is the third time that the Segue Institute has butted into one of my investigations,” Grant said. He looked like he’d been working around the clock, the meanness of his expression really just deep bags under his eyes. Frustration turned his mouth downward. He’d probably known from the moment he got here that his time was ticking, that Segue, the preeminent research institution for paranormal phenomena, would be stepping in soon.

Ellie waited while Cam looked long and hard at Grant. Then Cam turned around, and from the workstation picked up a sphere, like a soccer ball, but tethered to a black wire. Had to be some sort of scientific apparatus. “Have you gotten this across yet?”

She knew that Cam was trying to show Dr. Grant some measure of respect, rather than just kicking him off the search and rescue.

Grant’s jaw cocked to the side. “No. I’ve had no success breaching the boundary.”

She took the ball when Cam held it out to her. “Will it even get any readings?”

“Nope,” Cam said. “But if you would?”

Ellie stepped up to the water, felt a slight, cooling spray on her face. She closed her eyes and looked for the fracture within, the one that made her a monster, that made her afraid of her own shadow, and that made sanity irrelevant. And then she let the ball roll off her hand and into the water.

She opened her eyes to see it fall into the realm of Twilight, though she held the tether, a cord with hair-thin wires to relay information.

Dr. Grant made a whooping noise and dashed to the desk, presumably to turn on the retrieval component of the machine. Ellie’d bet he wasn’t tired anymore.

“Specialist,” Col. Langer said, repeating her title and looking at her more closely.

Deep within, her shadow looked back at him, priming, defensive. That colonel had better look elsewhere.

“Yes,” Ellie answered.
Specialist.
She twitched the cord and looked at Cam. “What do you want me to do with this?” The proximity to the falls was messing with her head. She wanted to dash into the Otherworld to find the boy, but that would be suicide. Wanted to do other insane things too.

“Pull it out,” Cam said, his tone even.

“No!” shouted Dr. Grant.

But Ellie towed on the wet line, hand over hand. The ball, only feet away in the forest, stayed put, nested on a root, though the black cord kept coming and coming, well past its original length. The cord was spooling at her feet when Dr. Grant came over to examine it, his expression stricken with confusion.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What kind of trick is this?”

“I’m not trying to trick you,” Cam said. “I’m trying to help you take the next step with your research.”

Ellie felt Col. Langer’s interest sharpen on her.

Within, her shadow snarled.

Cam stepped up beside her, drew out a pocketknife, and thumbed open the blade. “Nothing about the Otherworld makes sense, so no data gathering is possible.” He cut the cord, and the extraneous spooling gasped into black smoke. “Anything that crosses into Twilight is as good as lost. That ball isn’t five feet from us, as it appears. It’s a million miles away, in a realm that has no boundaries, no mappable features, and changes by the moment.”

“What the hell was that black smoke?”

Geez. Ellie let out a long breath. Grant had a lot to learn.

“The periodic table of Twilight has one element: Shadow,” Cam said. “It’s pure magic, as is the fae child who was left here. I’ll be needing to meet him next. Ellie and I have been assigned here because JT, gone two days now, doesn’t have time for your steep learning curve.”

Cam peered into the observation window of the holding cell. The fae child was in the corner of the room, curled into a ball on a cot. He appeared helpless, but Cam wasn’t so sure that was the case.

“I understand he’s taken no food?”

Dr. Velez, the woman who oversaw the fae’s care, answered. “It’s been offered, but he won’t touch it. He’s had water from the falls, 180 ml every two hours. He hasn’t urinated at all.”

Cam stepped back. “Unlock the door please.”

As the space was cramped, Col. Langer and Dr. Grant had remained in the main area of the unit so Cam and Ellie could take a look. Dr. Velez opened the door, and Cam stepped past her into the cell.

Ellie trailed behind him. As she crossed the threshold, the fae scrambled up, nonsensical syllables spilling in a rush from his mouth. His facial features appeared gaunter than in the original photos. The mortal world seemed to be as rough on him as Twilight surely was on JT.

Cam caught Ellie’s sharp look right before she stepped forward, hands open in a sign of peace and welcome to the fae. Who launched himself into her arms and wept against her neck like a child. Cam was not surprised at Ellie’s sudden affinity with a creature of Shadow, but it still left him conflicted. Her connection to the fae child was good for the mission, but he would not compromise Ellie or her shadow unless he was certain they would be safe. But all signs so far pointed to their going forward.

Shhh,
she soothed, stroking the fae child’s hair.

Cam knew this was no child; the fae were eternal. This had to be a game or some kind of deception. Curiosity toward the human world maybe. Predatory? They’d have to see. Maybe JT, whose face it shared, had been its prey.

“Has the fae been analyzed at all?” Cam asked. “Any tests performed? Samples taken from its person?”

Dr. Grant, now standing in the open doorway, hesitated before answering no.

Which Cam knew meant that he had tried, but no samples were possible because they had probably dematerialized into Shadow and wafted away. Pointless. Grant was a man of science; the fae was magic. Modern research required a marriage of the two.

Ordinarily, Cam would have let Grant stay. The more Shadow was investigated, its properties understood and knowledge about them disseminated throughout the scientific communities, the better, because the world was entering an age that would be dominated by magic. Event horizons like the waterfall were common in legend and myth, and would become so again in modern times. Science could no longer fear the unknown; it would only impede progress.

Take Ellie for example. One part was blond, blue-eyed sweetness. Approachable. But Grant and Col. Langer would fear her shadow, a transparent grey replica, gorgeously naked. Ellie would be held in an observation room like this one. In fact, four months ago, Cam had done that to her himself, as if any kind of cell could possibly hold her shadow. No, that inky, sexy entity went after exactly what it wanted—through the walls even. She was both girl next door and dark goddess.

Science and magic. Only the Segue Institute embraced the two.

“It’s going to be okay.” Ellie crouched to put the fae back on the cot. “I’m here to help you.” Cam saw her warped reflection in the fae’s black eyes. “Help you,” she repeated. “Yes.”

They’d have to come back later and do this again, but without an audience outside the cell. If Ellie got such a positive reaction from the fae, her shadow might get one even more interesting. This was why they’d been sent, but Cam didn’t have to like it.

They eased back out of the room. The door locked automatically.

“Just what kind of specialist are you?” Col. Langer demanded of Ellie.

“Shadow,” she answered. “I’ve had a knack for it all my life.”

Cam concealed a wry smile at her play on words, intended just for him. Shadow, capital S, the magic from Twilight, was different from shadow, lower case, Ellie’s dark, primal self that could separate from her body. Everyone else heard the same word, but Cam, Ellie, and Segue knew the dramatic difference the size of one letter made.

“We’d like to meet Ms. Parson and her son, Carter,” Cam said. “I want to hear the story firsthand.”

Angie Parson had the look of a woman who’d been through hysteria and had come back out as the personification of brittle, cold rage. She sat on a thin bunk bed. Her son Carter had been escorted to the temporary cafeteria following his re-questioning. Her voice was chilly smooth. “I say we take that monster and throw him right back in the water.”