The Shadows Trilogy (Box Set: Edge of Shadows, Shadows Deep, Veiled Shadows) (29 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Sweat pooled on David’s brow and then slowly trickled down the side of his face. His shirt stuck to his back. The wall of heat that seemed to surround him pressed against his chest and made it difficult to breathe. His skin felt dry and shriveled. Every so often, the barest breath of a cool breeze would flitter by and for one-tenth of a second he felt the sweat harden and his skin tingle in anticipation of returning to its natural state. And then it was gone, and he was left with just the heat and the sweat and the blank hole in his head where his memories should be.

He’d stopped trying to calculate time ages ago. Now he measured its passage only by the nanoseconds he felt cool, and the far larger majority of time when he didn’t. He wondered if this was what it was like to go insane. Then he wondered if he was insane already. It was only the fragile thread of the fact that Ellie existed that kept him grounded in any kind of reality. Ellie, who would be left alone in this madness if he went insane. Ellie had made an insidious choice for both of them, and if he left her then she would have damned them both for absolutely no reason.

It wasn’t like David to feel the overwhelming anger that threatened to consume him when he thought about the ramifications of Ellie’s choice. She couldn’t have known that she was condemning David to this hellish prison. He had nothing to do other than sweat and think. And pray for relief.

When David focused on the room around him, it didn’t seem like a place that would occupy space in hell. After thinking on it for a long time, David didn’t know where else he could be. The house, the Bradford mansion, was a gateway to hell. The beautiful house looked so normal from the outside, but then the smoke and mirrors cleared, and the truth was revealed. It was nothing more than a gilded mousetrap that drew them in, and once it had them, it had snapped its jaws shut around them.

David’s prison cell was a medium-sized room that looked like it could have been a room in any house that dated from the early 1900s. It was old, but the details were still visible. The walls were covered in peeling blue floral wallpaper. Two wingback velvet chairs sat in front of a massive stone fireplace that ran from floor to ceiling. Occasionally a fire would appear roaring inside of it, and the memory of that intense heat made David twitch. He thought it couldn’t possibly get any hotter in the room than it already was, but that fire, when it appeared, threatened to melt his skin from his bones.

The focal point of the room was a large four-poster bed. It was adorned in heavy lace around the top and a light blue blanket coverlet. Of the sparse furnishings in the room, the bed looked the most inviting, but David quickly learned that it was all an elaborate facade.

The only time that he had tried to lie on the bed was right after he woke up inside the room. He spent hours pounding on the walls of the windowless room, screaming for Ellie until he was exhausted and beaten. He wanted to lie down for just a few minutes to gather up his stamina again, but just as he felt the softness of the mattress beneath him, the bed simply disappeared and dumped him onto the floor. When he tried to sit on the chairs, the same thing had happened. The room’s furnishings were nothing more than an illusion of the minimum creature comforts. In all actuality, he had nothing but the floor to lie on. No comfort at all.

The room had only one door, which led to a small washroom. The maker of the room’s taunts continued there. The shower offered no relief from the heat. Naturally, the only water that came out of its faucet, as well as the one in the small sink, was scalding hot. David couldn’t get away from the heat.

It didn’t take long to accept the fact that he was stuck. He believed that Ellie was in another room just like this one, trapped just like he was, and there was nothing that he could do to help her. They would have to wait for the one who drove the bargain to make his move. Those kinds of thoughts made him angry again.

David stood up and started to pace, careful to skirt the bed and the chairs. Although he wasn’t allowed to sit or lie on them, they were as real as he was when it came to appearance, as he found when he tried to walk through them. He had tested the boundaries and limits of his prison cell in every way he could, but had yet to find any way of an escape. He was tired. His emotional state was tenuous. More often now, he found himself hoping for it all to end.

In those moments, he would poke around that empty space in his head. If what Lillian had said was true, he had somehow grown up in the Bradford mansion. That made him wonder if he had spent his childhood doing exactly what he was doing now. The thought was scary and sobering at the same time. In such a short time, his whole existence was thrown into question. Before Ellie, it summed up to being used and abused as a means to an end by those with dark and sinister intentions. It all began because David had the misfortune of being born at the wrong time in the wrong place—on the eve of the blood sacrifice of his parents, almost a hundred years ago.

David knew that he was focusing on the wrong things. He needed to be figuring out a way out, but then it would hit him again that even though he thought he was twenty-nine, he was in fact almost a century old. How was that even possible? Then the never-ending circle of thoughts and diatribes would begin again. He wanted to remember, if for no other reason than to regain some semblance of who he was.

The pacing made him even warmer, so David stopped to lean up against the wall in his favorite corner, which was as far away from the fireplace as possible. His eyes had just closed when he felt that cool breeze again. It hadn’t come by in so long that he had almost forgotten what it felt like, and he sighed. What caught his attention and brought his thoughts back to the present was when the breeze continued for more than thirty seconds.

His eyes fluttered open, and then widened. There, next to the fireplace, was a window. A window that had not existed when he retreated to his corner. It was open, and gaily bright yellow sheet curtains lifted inward in response to the cool air wafting into the room. David moved quickly across the floor and peered at the window. He couldn’t see anything beyond it, but the breeze was there nonetheless. His cracked lips hurt as they broke into a smile, but he didn’t care. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and he stood tall, turning a full circle, allowing more of his feverish skin access to the breeze’s icy tendrils.

It was like the cool air crystallized his thoughts as well. He was ashamed of himself for having thoughts of giving up. Ellie needed him. He had to find a way out. He had to find her.

“Lovely, isn’t it? Refreshing.” The voice came out of nowhere and David whirled around to find a man sitting in one of the chairs next to the fireplace. David felt as though he had seen the man before, and he squinted at him.

“Who are you?” David growled. He tried to size the man up. He was broad shouldered, and his dark red hair was longer, curling against his collar. Even with the heat in the room, the man wore jeans, a white collared shirt, and a lightweight gray jacket. Not one drop of sweat covered his brow. David would guess that women would find the man attractive. All of David’s senses were on high alert; this man must be dangerous if he could appear in David’s closed room.

“I thought it was time that we got reacquainted,” the man said, smiling. His teeth were straight and blindingly white. “We’re old friends, although I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”

“Says who?” David asked.

The man gestured to the other seat. “Sit. I just want to talk, David.”

David snorted. “You know as well as I do that is just a fancy parlor trick. I can’t sit in that chair. It’ll just disappear.” He crossed his arms. He wasn’t going to look like a fool in front of this man.

The man flashed his smile again and shrugged. “I assure you that it is as real as the chair I am sitting in, but I understand why you don’t believe me. Things here are...tricky. You do whatever you think is best.”

It was like the man was testing him. His familiar attitude was grating, but this was the first person that David had seen since he was imprisoned there. He needed information, which meant he needed to play nice. David reluctantly left the window, but was relieved to find the breeze seemed to be staying put. He stepped to the chair. Fully expecting to land on his butt on the floor, David fell into it. He was greeted with the softness of a cushion cradling his lower back.

He bit back a groan of delight. The man across from him watched silently, but his eyebrow was cocked as if to say “
See, I told you so.
”

Although he wanted to savor the moment, David knew that he needed to focus. He had been without any comfort for so long that making the chair real was likely a diversion to put him at ease. He had no intention of believing the man’s friendly intentions so easily. “I’m sure you didn’t stop by just to make sure I was comfortable,” David finally said. “Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

“So brash. Almost rude actually,” the man said, steeping his fingers together in front of his face. “Not the reaction I expected at all given our history. Plus I would have expected a kinder reaction considering I saved your life.”

The memory exploded in David’s mind. He saw the confrontation with Lillian and Joseph, as they were preparing to kill Ellie. A robed figure appeared next to Ellie and whispered in her ear. The cowl of the cloak had shifted just before the figure disappeared, and David caught the briefest glimpse of the man underneath. It was the man sitting across from him.

David’s skin began to crawl. Ellie explained who the man was; not really a man at all, in fact. David wanted to get as far away from the demon as possible, but where was he going to go? He was trapped in a room with no way to escape. The fact that the man seemed to think they already knew each other was frightening. Who had he been before? David was frustrated again at his amnesia.

“Ellie saved my life,” he said softly. “I’d like to see her. I’m worried about her.”

The man nodded sympathetically. “I understand why you’ve been worried about Ellie. I can assure you that she is safe and being well taken care of. I suppose I owe you a thank-you as well considering you brought her to me. But then again, we’ve always worked well together, haven’t we?”

David’s mind raced. There were too many things that he didn’t remember, and too many things being thrown at him that made no sense. The man made it sound like they were partners, but there was no way that he would have drawn Ellie into this madness.
Was there?

When it became clear that David wasn’t going to respond, the man sighed. He stood up and moved around the chair to stand behind it. Then he leaned over and braced his hands on the back.

“I was hoping that by now you would have dredged up a few memories of your time from before. That would have been helpful considering we have a lot to do. But since Lillian’s little magic spell there seems to be holding much better than I would have ever anticipated, we’re going to have to do things the hard way. You were never a fan of the hard way.”

David had no idea what the man was talking about, but his interest was piqued when he heard that his memories had been deliberately tampered with. Logic said that perhaps they could be untampered with. Maybe he could get some answers after all.

“My name is Mikel,” the man continued. “I’m your host here, but we were friends once too. You helped me with many of my special projects.”

The man’s grin made David uncomfortable as did his emphasis on the word “special.” “So where is here?” David asked. He had to play it cool.

Mikel waggled a finger at him. “That is an excellent question, David.
Here
is a fairly relative term. To ensure we’re clear, when I say
here
, I’m referring to the waypoint that you know of as the Bradford mansion.”

“What’s a waypoint?” David asked.

“For the purposes of this discussion, let’s just say that a waypoint is a gateway to another place,” Mikel said.

David’s assumption had been correct. “Is that where we are right now?”

“Not exactly,” Mikel said with a sly smile.

“I’m not sure I understand then,” David said. Mikel was freely giving up information, but David couldn’t believe anything he said. He sensed that the only truth Mikel would tell him would be truths that served his own purposes.

Mikel waved his hand in the air, dismissing David’s comment. “Here. There. That doesn’t matter. What I think would matter to you is
where
is Ellie.”

Her name made David’s chest tighten. His feelings for her had not diminished one bit during his time in the room. He was anxious to see her and make sure she was unharmed.

“Ellie is all that matters to me,” David said firmly. “I will do whatever you want to keep her safe.”

Mikel returned to his seat in the chair and looked completely relaxed. “I am so glad you said that, David. Because on the topic of Ellie’s safety we are in complete agreement. I’m sure you know that she holds you in very high regard. It almost makes me a little jealous.”

David was certain that there was much more to the story that Mikel wasn’t telling him. And the familiarity of the way that Mikel said Ellie’s name worried him. It was friendly and...intimate.

“That includes keeping Ellie safe from you,” David said.

Mikel threw back his head and laughed. There was a note of shrillness deep within the noise that scratched down the back of David’s spine. “You amuse me, David. You always have. Which is good for you because you do not want to ever be in a position where I am upset with you.”