Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) (20 page)

Stupid, Franky.

Franky? No, you’re Frank King. Thoughts like that will get you killed, Franky —
his father’s voice.

He fell down the wall, his bloody shirt rolled up against his back, and his skin prickled against the coolness of the bricks. An earthquake shook in his mind.

Who was he?

Why was he?

His son? Why couldn’t he remember his son? His past? His life?

The old Frank was somewhere in that dusty brain screaming and beating on the walls of his cranium. Frank could feel him. But the blackness was suffocating him, strangling the noises until they were muted.

Frank wasn’t that Frank anymore.

You’re not. Just let the Shadows consume you.

He was a murderer of Mortals. A man who walked amongst the black figures hidden in the darkness. He stood, shaking his head, trying to empty the good thoughts, the happy ones, through his ears. The left hand still felt numb, but he could move it and could even move his arm a little bit, just a slight bend at the elbow. There was no doubt something was wrong with him, but which him?

The healing was a benefit. He didn’t mind that, but still, he missed his son — the thought of him. That’s all he missed.

His heart stuttered to a stop, then sped up. Something glowed at the end of the tunnel. He heard a growl, low and deep, and rabid. Whatever it was, blended in with the darkness towards the end of the tunnel.

He walked on.

Each step seemed to be slow and painful, despite there not being much pain at all, but he reached the glowing redness in about three minutes. He couldn’t have walked that slowly.

Two creatures, black and knobby, hunched over a car on its side, pressed up against the wall. A smattering of glittery glass caught their darkness and their red eyes. They hadn’t heard Frank creep up on them. Though he limped and he was sure his ankles and joints creaked like the old man he was.

It wasn’t until one of the monsters lifted up their head, dirty-black horns sprouting from their skull like thick antennas, and it sniffed deeply that Frank felt like he’d made a big mistake coming down the tunnel.

The Demon grunted and turned. A liquid shined against his mouth, hung from its chin in clumps, thick strings, the color lost in the darkness.

Frank sensed what it was, and when the Demon opened its mouth, it was all but confirmed. Red stained its already yellow-stained teeth.

Part of Frank was already running back the way he came, away from the chaos, away from the likes of these creatures.

But most of him stood proudly, and he found himself hopping over the guardrail, feet landing with a heavy thud. He strode over to the Demon who stared at him with slitted eyes, a soft red glow between the leathery skin of its lids. The other went on eating, like nothing had happened. Frank heard the squelching, saw the twitch of the soles of whoever its victim was. That white check mark swooshed back and forth with the person’s soft whimpers.

“Demon,” Frank said.

The one paying attention squared up, straightened itself. Frank came up to about chest level on the thing. It was large in height and in width, about the same as a pickup truck. A wonder how the thing had even fit into the tunnel with all the cars. But one was thrown up against the wall, and as Frank’s eyes adjusted, he could see an entire row had been cleared that lead out to the city.

The thing could’ve squashed him with as little effort as Frank could’ve squashed a mosquito that had landed on his arm.

“Frank King,” the Demon said in a deep, thrumming voice. Frank heard it in perfect English, though the way the creature’s lips had moved told Frank they spoke with a black tongue from the depths of Hell. At least that’s what he thought. He’d not been totally sure if there was such a thing. His area of expertise had stopped when his arrow buried in whatever he was hunting.
 

The other Demon turned, covered in even more blood. “Mortal!” he shouted and lunged at Frank.

Frank didn’t even flinch, but the other Demon held out a thick, tree-trunk arm to hold his partner back. And Frank was bathed with the sour stench of flesh and death.

“Frank King,” the other Demon said, his eyes opening wide, pupils flaming red.

“We have heard much about you. The whispers tell us we are to help you in slaying a Protector. The one without his blade. My name is Caskan, my friend is Drak. We are now your humble servants.”

Frank smiled wide. “Pleased to meet you.” He extended a hand, but the Demons just looked at it, and he pulled it back, stuffing it into the pocket of his jeans.

The Shadows had guided him there. There was no talk of it in his head…yet it just felt so right. If Harold Storm was the Protector the voices feared, Frank King would need all the help he could get.

C
HAPTER
29

For once, access to the city was not easy. From the Lake called Shallows, he had to travel east. He would’ve preferred the tunnels — Guesser, maybe even Rubin — but they were choked with a wave of abandoned cars. He’d come this far, and the Liberty Bridge was near.
 

The entrance to the bridge had also been full of destruction, but easier to maneuver through without a roof over his head, or the darkness. He had the red sky to help guide him, as weird as it felt. It would get him to Chet’s just about an hour slower. Maybe more with all the cars.

He made it through some thirty minutes later — thirty minutes filled with eerie silence and hot wind. The city was one he’d never laid eyes on. A lump had formed in his throat then, one he couldn’t swallow. Skyscrapers burned bright with chunks missing from their structures. The road was cracked, leaving a black lightning bolt zagging through the asphalt. One foot stood on each side, his eyes traced the line for as far as he could see or at least until the road ended at the base of a once large and elaborate fountain, no longer spewing water and half crushed into rubble. He thought it was the McCamp Library, where he’d once gone to do his taxes for free, but it looked so alien and ruined, that he squinted and shook his head. That couldn’t be it.

And where were all the people? Where was the noise? The bustling city sounds?

The city had never been this void of conversation since its construction, since it was nothing but a forest of thick trees. Though faintly, he could hear a car alarm chirping in the distance, and the lick and split of flames consuming a nearby structure, but somehow, the black clouds that hung above the city, above him, did well enough to muffle most of it, and ash fell like depressing snow.

He turned back towards the bridge. LIBERTY in big white letters stood on a green sign high above him. He leaned up against a rusty Mercury and thought he saw some drops of blood spattered on the back window, and he couldn’t help but look.

Blood everywhere, but no body. And the smell that leaked from the cracked window was something straight from a morgue. A little green suction cup laid on the floor, like maybe the Mercury had been smuggling octopuses — or aliens.

His heartbeat sped up.

What the Hell was happening?

Harold gripped the sword of Orkane’s hilt tighter, hoping to rouse the Wolves.
 

No luck.

He felt squeamish, like he’d just collapse and vomit onto the sidewalk like he had done so many times after a binge at Chet’s. But he didn’t.

Using the blade as a walking stick, he propped himself up like an old man. What could Harold do? He couldn’t save the city any longer. It was beyond saving.

Chet’s bar was a few blocks away. All he could do was hope he wasn’t too late. So he ran as fast as his wobbly legs would let him, rounding the corner of a deli, the plate glass windows shattered with glittering shards everywhere. He crunched the pieces into dust, kept running.

Chet’s was closer now, could almost smell the biker gang’s body odor that had settled into the booth cushions, could almost hear that familiar buzz of neon, see the old bartender’s wrinkled face and young smile. Harold’s home away from home.

Then he found out where all the people had gone. Most of them, at least.

He stumbled upon a vast courtyard that once housed many colorful flowers and neatly trimmed bushes, a few pine trees here, an apple tree there, but now all that was left of the foliage were bones. Scorched wood, trees barren of all leaves and colors except for ashy grays and deep blacks.

Harold’s mind went to the evil limbs which scrabbled at his throat in his dreams. But he blinked hard once, erasing that image. These were not them. No, these were just unlucky trees. The witnesses to the atrocities committed to the tens of people stacked at their base.

Broken bodies. Blood. Limbs strewn throughout the charred grass. Harold couldn’t take it even with the sword giving him phantom strength in his hand. The courage deflated. He could’ve turned and ran, but instead, turned and vomited onto a trash can knocked on its side. He spilled his guts onto the trashcan’s spilled guts. How ironic, he thought when he was almost done.

The smell didn’t help — rotting flesh, burnt bones, opened innards — but that wasn’t what had done it. It was the weight of the situation; how these people were
real
people. They had lives just as Harold had — dreams, ambitions, goals, families. They’d loved; they’d lost. They probably had a favorite food; a favorite movie. Memories, too — their first kiss; one Christmas where the family was whole and everyone got along perfectly, and the ham had tasted like it’d been cut from a pig straight from Heaven.

Now all lost.

Now gone.

Not even given a proper burial, just thrown on the ground like balled up pieces of garbage.

He clutched his stomach, the acid burning his nostrils, bile in the back of his throat. The vomit threatened to explode out of him again. But he held it down.

Not today.

Find your courage. Find the Pack, Harry,
he thought.

The hilt bit into his palm as he squeezed it tighter and used it to prop himself up once more. He walked towards the bodies, ruined nose buried in the sleeve of his ratty trench coat.

He didn’t know what he intended to do, not until he was three feet away from the faces. People he’d never seen before in his life. A woman wearing a business suit, a man with a ponytail and a peace sign embroidered in his jean jacket, a couple of teenagers who looked happy, like they were giggling about the newest high school rumors, even in death.
 

He stood over them all, brought a hand up to his heart, felt it cracking and threatening to shatter. In all of those faces, he’d seen himself, and the ones he’d loved. Marcy, his mother, Chet, and Sahara, even Roberta.

His jaw cracked as he flexed it.

Chet’s was not far, and neither was the chaos.

Harold Storm walked like a man on a mission.
 

C
HAPTER
30

That dinky bar and grill cleverly named the Lake was still on the sandy edges of Lake Shallows. He’d remembered going there when he was a teenager, chasing around Becky Salmons and Karen Fritz with a wet towel, and the way the hostess looked at him and his group, like they were the lowest form of scum on the earth, and told them they weren’t welcome. A tourist spot didn’t need local kids running them out of business. But that’s not what did them in anyway.

These memories came in bits and pieces. Thoughts from another dimension, they seemed, and he tried to push them away, tried to let the Shadows consume him, but they wouldn’t.

It had seemed like ages since the voices talked to him. He was doing alright on his own, but God, the loneliness inside of his skull began to take its toll. He would’ve done anything for the comfort of his dead father, or the snaky-voice of the Dark One.

They refused to grant him that wish, no matter how many times he called upon them.

Now he was stuck with the two Demons trailing him as they walked up the shifting sands, who might’ve sensed Frank was losing it. That caused his skin to prickle. They figure it out and he’s dinner for the two beasts.

The Lake, bar and grill, matched the rest of the shitty tourist spot, which was more like a cemetery for dead fish and mutated birds. Mold grew up the sides of the building. Windows were cracked. There was a front door that hung on its hinges like a gimpy arm. And the smell was something out of Hell itself.

He imagined what the hostess’s face would’ve looked like had she been manning the front entrance when he strolled up with two Demons on each shoulder instead of gals. She would’ve died right there on the spot, and Frank’s dates would’ve feasted on her body without hesitation.

The trio came up upon a car parked crookedly, halfway on the sand and half on the dead grass near a derelict and rusted chain link fence. The car was a once nice black Audi. That foreign shit that Frank would’ve never been caught dead driving. No, American made was the stuff of his fancy. His old Ford popped into head, flaming and broken, almost as bad off as the little restaurant him and his group crested. He bet that Harold Storm drove that bastard with black shades over his mismatched eyes, blaring horrible pop music or that techno garbage that made Frank think about two robots having sex.

God, he meant to make Harold Storm suffer. Or did he?

Frank looked up, his boots skidded to a stop in the sand, and he brought up his left hand — now without any pain, for the Shadows had healed him — to shield his eyes from the fire in the sky. Two figures, black silhouettes of tall people, slunk near the patio of the restaurant.

The Demons stopped behind him, large gusts of wind clobbered their nostrils as they sniffed into the air. Frank thought breathing that deep would’ve been enough to melt your insides with the toxic green gas that lingered, but nothing happened to them.

“Food,” Drak said, before moving forward, nudging Frank out of the way.

A low bellow broke from a silhouette: “
FRENNNNN?”
it said, more like a question.

“
NOOOO!”
the other said, before turning and running.

The Demons were too fast and pounced on the figures like lions on a gazelle. Frank picked up speed, too. He let go of the shotgun that hung from a strap over his shoulder, heart thudding, and ran towards the action.