Shadow's Edge (8 page)

T
e
n

T
here must be a male gene or disorder that makes guys eat like they're four years old,” Brooke said as she leaned across the cafeteria table to stare at Troy, whose face was smeared with sauce as he devoured a plate of hot wings. My stomach turned at the sight. It had been three weeks since school started and I still wasn't used to the cafeteria food.

“Want one?” Troy said, waving a sloppy fistful in front of Caroline.

“No thanks. You look like some kind of wild animal or something eating those things.” Caroline sat back. She laughed and added, “There are these things called napkins and they work really awesome.”

“Whatever. Gotta keep up my weight for the game this weekend,” Troy mumbled as he zeroed back in on his hot wings. He sifted through the carnage and licked his fingers loudly.

“Disgusting,” Brooke said under her breath.

I felt a hand on my knee. “Think I'm disgusting?” asked a voice next to me.

“Not at all.” I turned to smile at Alex, his face inches from mine. He had a plate of wings in front of him, too. His lips were red and a little puffy from the chili peppers in the hot sauce.

“I think you have wing sauce in your hair,” he said, pointing to a long strand of my hair with an orange speck at the end.

I shrugged. “I'll live.” I scooted a little closer to him. “Even if I look like a homeless person.”

“You're the hottest homeless person I've ever seen.” Alex picked up a napkin from the table and wiped
his mouth.

I smiled at him and wanted to freeze the moment like an ice sculpture that would never melt—a relic I could put on my dresser to stare at and think,
Everything was perfect for Normal Leah right then.

Yet my focus broke as I saw a Light Créatúir appear in the center of the lunch table. Nearly the same size as Alex, he sat cross-legged on the table, looking down at us. His skin glowed gold as his three heads looked in different directions; each head had slicked-back green hair and a pencil-thin green goatee. Then he stretched his arms above his three heads, two of which spun completely around, like in that movie
The Exorcist.

Not to mention that he was, um, naked. As if I needed to see any Créatúir “business” while I was trying to eat. And his head wasn't the only thing that he had, um, three of.

Gross.

“So why aren't you wearing that necklace? The one I gave back to you?” Alex asked.

The Créatúir's head snapped in my direction and I felt a slight burning glow on my birthmark as he leaned toward me. I adjusted my gold cuff bracelet, making sure it was covered.

Alex on one side, within kissing distance, and the Créatúir on the other, inches from my face. I waved my right arm around, forcing Three Heads to lean back.

“Oh, you know, didn't go with my outfit,” I tried to say casually, pushing the Créatúir back. Melissa was right. They were getting bolder.

“What's wrong with your arm?” Brooke asked from across the table.

“Nothing.” I quickly dropped it to the table, splashing hot sauce. I watched as Naked Créatúir Man dipped a blue finger in the spilled sauce, reached up, and flicked it onto Caroline's white shirt.

“Ah! Yuck! Troy!” Caroline screeched, dabbing at
her shirt.

The Créatúir cackled before disappearing, leaving a few twinkling orbs behind.

“Relax, you'll live.” Brooke rolled her eyes. She leaned forward and whispered to me, “I need to talk to you later. It's about … ” She glanced around the table, but everyone was absorbed in a conversation about the game against Montgomery Central, if their linebackers were on steroids and how much more it would rule to beat them again next year, in the new stadium. “ … About your old friend,” she finished and sat back.

“Brooke, I already told you. I doubt you saw her,”
I said. I heard a crackle come from the darkened corner next to us.

Brooke shrugged and played with the water bottle in front of her. Behind her, a purple, seven-foot-tall Dark Créatúir stepped away from the wall. She was still hidden in the shadows, and her red eyes glowed as she bared jagged, messed-up teeth. A long, forked, black tongue began to snake out of her mouth and head toward Brooke.

“Shantis glaadriel unfanta de Oran,”
I whispered quickly.

The Créatúir heard me, retracted her tongue, and
disappeared.

“What?” Alex turned to me.

“Nothing. Just, er, repeating some Spanish verb conjugations,” I said quickly.

More like,
Leave us alone or I won't meet with King Oran
in Créatúir-speak.

I wasn't exactly looking forward to talking to King Oran, since he took “creepy” to, like, seven whole new levels, but I figured it would get Them off my lunch table and back to the Other Realm where they belong. Although I hoped Oran could provide some answers, I certainly wasn't going to travel to the Other Realm and risk losing my life once again, so I planned to try summoning him instead. Summoning witnesses and researching texts in my world should be enough. It had to be.

I watched as Alex picked up another hot wing, shoved the whole thing into his mouth, and pulled out only a bone. It was fascinating and disgusting, and also kind of hot, all at the same time.

“The only Spanish I need is what I learned on spring break last year:
Hola. Me llamo Troy. Venga a mi habitaci
ó
n de hotel
,” Troy said with a laugh, his mouth full of chicken.

“What does that mean?” Alex asked.

“My name is Troy. Come to my hotel room.”

“You're messed up,” Brooke said, rolling her eyes.

“No,” Troy said as he held a wing up in the air. “The only thing that's going to be messed up are the losers from Brookdale Heights after I tear their heads off this Friday.”

“Right on.” Alex leaned over to smack a high five with Troy.

Except that Troy was still covered in hot sauce. And after the smack, so were the rest of us. I jumped up, surveying my pink shirt now dotted with red sauce. It looked like one of those Rorschach inkblot tests.

And as I stood up, I caught the eye of Ben, across the lunchroom. He flashed me a thumbs-up coupled with an eye roll, that strangely made my stomach drop.

El
ev
e
n

G
rant me protection. Grant me peace. Protect me from the dark side.”
I clutched the quartz crystal in my right hand and held it over my heart as I closed my eyes.
“Bring me vision. Bring me clarity. Show me the way,”
I whispered into the darkness.

It was three days after the Naked Créatúir sighting in the lunchroom, and I was finally ready.

The cool night air wrapped around me as stillness settled into my bone marrow. I shifted a little, giving my sitz bones some momentary comfort from the hardness of the ground. I opened my eyes and set the quartz down in front of me on a mossy rock. Out of my pocket, I pulled a sprig of ginger and an offering of honey and placed them next to the crystal.

I glanced around me … back at my darkened house illuminated with the soft glow of the streetlights beyond.

The darkest part of the garden—far away from the welcoming confines of the platform where I called for the Light Créatúir—menaced in front of me. It seemed to soak in the moonlight, growing stronger in will and power. I looked up at the thorn tree above me and my heart started to pound.

I exhaled and whispered the words:
“Créatúir dark and of the night, come to me in my sight. Moon glows heavy, water runs cold, come to me my Créatúir bold.”

Crickets, hidden in the curling foliage that surrounded me, grew softer until finally their incessant chirping silenced. The air stood still for a moment, as if on pause.

Then, a faint buzzing sound. Tiny specks of light began to appear in front of me, growing larger and larger, circling and swaying about like tiny gnats. The buzzing grew louder and louder and the tiny gnat lights grew into a swarm of lights, much like mosquitoes. Amidst the swarm of lights, a figure appeared. Larger and larger the swarm grew, enveloping me in the buzzing, whipping around my head like a funnel cloud.

Then, silence, as they disappeared. In the darkness in front of me, a terrifying figure was taking shape. I crawled backward on my hands and feet, like a lobster escaping a fisherman. I crushed the wet grass beneath my hands as the shadow grew above me.

My elbows weakened and I slipped to the ground, lying flat on my back, knees bent toward the black sky.
I waited.

And then, suddenly, he was there.

King Oran. King of the Dark Créatúir. King of
the Night.

Looming large above me, the starry night a backdrop for his headless body. Dressed in tattered leather, his decaying head tucked underneath his left arm by his thick, gray wrists with flesh peeling off.

The grin on his severed head stretched like the skin was made of clay. His lips spread from ear to ear, the pointed yellow teeth in his mouth far apart like his mouth was a Venus flytrap waiting for a poor insect to crawl inside. His black eyes shifted constantly, searching, seeking me. A long whip, made of a spinal column, rested in his right hand, the white bones illuminated in the moonlight.

The last of his kind. A dullahan. The inspiration for
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
.

A small sound escaped from my lips as my heart seized in my chest. The black eyes on the decaying head focused on me and I felt a heavy sensation settle on my shoulders. I quickly sat up, grabbed the quartz crystal resting in front of me, and felt immediate relief. Slowly, I stood up—past the jaws that snapped toward me, past the broad chest covered in scarred leather—until I was on my feet, facing the King of Nightmares.

His black eyes stared at me as the tiny glowing mosquitoes whizzed past him like a hurricane.

“The Créatúir Shaman returns,” Oran's head snarled. The mosquitoes hovered for a moment before continuing to swarm. His jaws snapped at them, catching their black carcasses like poppy seeds between his teeth. Then the bugs swooped down and whisked away my offering of ginger and honey, off to their realm to be consumed.

I nodded and clutched the quartz. “I heard about what happened to Fiona.”

A noise came from Oran's head that sounded like a snort. “Anya does not know. She cannot see.”

Although most of the Créatúir language had come back to me, the dialect of the Dark Créatúir was still hard to understand. Their words often sounded like the hissing of a snake.

“The truce exists for now, but that may change,” Oran continued when I didn't say anything. “The Dark beings will not be held responsible for Fiona's murder. For the
poison
.” He drew out the last word and his eyes began to glow.

I tightened my grip on the quartz. “It wasn't a Créatúir of the night who did it?”

The spine whip still in his hand, Oran raised a thick, rotting finger and pointed it at me. His flesh strained and cracked as his finger grew, moving closer to my face, gray skin falling to the ground as it came near. “Do not suggest it.”

A bead of cold sweat trickled down my spine as I nodded. He retracted his finger. The swarm was beginning to gather around him once more.

“I grow weary of Anya and her accusations. Of their pride in the purity of their bloodline. It is they who will be the destruction of the Other Realm, not the Dark.” He reached into the air and snapped his whip at one of the buzzing lights. It fell onto the rock next to Oran and transformed into a grotesque Cyclops with one giant fly-eye and arms with hooves at the end. It whimpered before Oran lashed it with his spine whip, and it disappeared.

“Who do you think is responsible?” I said as I tried to will myself not to shiver.

Oran's decaying head twisted grotesquely into a laugh before speaking. “The Light, of course. They are framing us for the murder.” His mouth unfurled as he pronounced each world, his spotted, forked tongue hissing like a snake.

I nodded quickly, but my face must've shown my skepticism. It was doubtful the Light would kill one of their most beloved just to make the Dark look bad. The Dark did a pretty good job of that all on their own.

“You humans.” Oran took a step toward me, the teeth of his head inches away from my bare arm. “You either destroy or ridicule anything you don't understand. You only see what you want to see, only imagine mystical creatures to be tiny, beautiful, and waiting to help you.” His right arm twitched with the spine whip and I felt my blood stop. “If only you all knew what existed in the dark as well as the light.” His head sniffed at the birthmark on my left arm, which ached in his presence. His thick fingers moved his head closer to my arm; I shivered and leaned backward.

Stay focused.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I asked.

“Come to my kingdom and you will surely find answers,” he said.

I shook my head vehemently. “I'm not going back to the Other Realm.”

Oran lifted his severed head so that it was equal with mine. The stench of rotting skin and metallic blood nearly overpowered me. His forked tongue escaped from his mouth, sniffing at my face before retracting. “But you have yet to see the Dark Kingdom. You ignored Inis Mor when you were in our realm with Fiona. You didn't see our land, where the blood runs into the rivers and the insects feed on flesh. You surely would find favor there. And my Créatúir would find favor with such a … ” Oran's head sniffed the air through his rotting nose, the bones visible through the worn-away skin. “ … Fine human.” His head laughed, and I cringed and fell backward onto the grass.

I looked up at him; he seemed ten feet tall. Knowing he had complete control over my fate, he continued. “And, since you have always been so closely allied with the Light, I have sent one of my minions to watch you, Shaman. Watch you closely, both in the shadow and the sun.”

I shivered and drew my arms around my body as I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“You will absolve us of this murder, Shaman, or risk ending the truce between the Light and the Dark,” Oran warned. “You have proven time and again to us that you cannot be trusted, that you are crueler than we could dream to be. You have ignored the Dark, my Kingdom, for too long. But now, Shaman, you will pay your tithe and absolve my beings.” The eyes on his head grew red again as the rest of his body began to disappear. Soon, only two glowing red specks remained; then they disappeared into the night with the swirl of glimmering mosquitoes.

A warm breeze blew against my bare skin the moment Oran disappeared. The mossy rock became just a piece of limestone, and the quartz crystal's power dissipated.

I stood up slowly and walked across the damp grass under the pale moonlight.

As I made my way back to the house, I glanced quickly around, but only caught a glimpse of a bird. I doubted that was Oran's minion.

Safe in my bedroom, I pulled
The Grimoire of Annwn
out from under my bed and flipped through it quickly, hoping I'd missed some clue that could help … since Oran's invitation to Inis Mor wasn't something I was too jazzed about considering. But there was nothing new; the book remained silent.

I dropped the grimoire on the carpet and fell into bed, my skin still prickly and chilled.

I didn't fall asleep until sunrise.