Walking Shadow (The Darkworld Series Book 2) (9 page)

Maybe no one was who they claimed to be. Maybe the Venantium had a grip on everyone at the university. For the first time, I fully empathised with Howard’s attitude towards them. Who were they to think they owned the universe? I had never broken any laws. I hadn’t asked for any of this. I’d tried to make the most of a bad situation, associating with Claudia and the others only to learn more about what I was. Was that a crime, in the eyes of the masters?

I didn’t know, but I had an inkling that my days of leading a relatively peaceful double life were over.

leep came easily after the day I’d had, but it wasn’t a restful night. I dreamed I was back in that glass box, on display to the world as a part-demon freak. Cameras flashed, people jostling to get to the front of the crowd. I could see my own reflection in the glass, and for a second, my hazel eyes appeared violet. Demon eyes.

People jumped back, letting out cries I couldn’t hear behind the glass. I pressed my hands to it and cold bit at my fingers. It wasn’t glass. It was ice.

I hammered at it desperately until the skin on my hands cracked and beads of blood began to pepper my skin. Then heat seared my back, and I smelled burning. Someone behind me brandished a torch, and in the heat, the ice began to melt.

More torches flared, blue flames like those in the Venantium’s tunnels. Ice dripped onto my head and trickled down my back. I couldn’t get out, but there was nowhere to run. A paralysing sense of hopelessness seized me as the crowd closed in around my shrinking prison. As the first flame touched my skin I cried aloud, and awoke tangled in my bedcovers and drenched in sweat.

Breathing heavily, I examined my burning arm. Pain had flared along the not-quite-faded scar from the harpy’s attack and around the faint ring of bite-marks from where Mr Melmoth bit me. I had no idea if this was normal. Shuddering, I made for the shower to wash away all thought of the dream.

At least today was Saturday. I couldn’t handle a day of lectures, not after last night. Alex wanted to go book-shopping in Redthorne, so Sarah and I joined her. Nothing could calm me quite like browsing around bookshops, and later, people-watching in Starbucks over hot chocolate.

“Oh my God!” Alex shrieked, causing people across the room to stare at us. “It’s Ash’s boyfriend.”

Not again.
She pointed out the window, grinning, as Conrad tripped over the kerb and executed a spectacular face-plant.

“Please don’t come in here,” I muttered.

“Where else would we get our entertainment?” Alex snickered. “Oh. He’s gone. Shame.”

I exhaled in relief. Good job they had no idea he was a vampire. I’d never hear the end of
that.
A vampire stalker. What a novelty.

“Come on, Sarah, lighten up.” Alex nudged Sarah, who almost dropped her phone. “Hey―did you find out about the job?”

“Yeah, I got it,” said Sarah, in a surprisingly less-than-enthusiastic tone. Not that a job at the on-campus restaurant was glamorous, but money was money.

“But that’s awesome!” said Alex. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Um, I only found out now. They were trialling a few people.”

“Told you you’d nail it,” said Alex. “What’ll you be doing, waiting tables?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t think the trial went that well, but they’re desperate. I think one of their staff left over the holidays.”

“Nice going, anyway. Just make sure you don’t miss any LitSoc socials. We’re planning something epic this term, seeing as the social organiser screwed up massively at Halloween.”

“Was something supposed to be happening at Halloween?” I said, scrambling to remember what crazy thing had dominated my thoughts at that particular time. Oh yeah. Claudia and I had battled a bunch of ghouls.

“Hell, yeah,” said Alex. “We were meant to be spending the night in a haunted house.”

“No freaking way am I doing that,” said Sarah. “I’ll pass.”

“Come on,” said Alex. “It’s all in good fun. A sleepover in an old house, telling ghost stories by the fire… Ash?”

“What?” I said.

“You in?”

“Haunted houses?” I said. “Not really my thing.”

“Scared of ghosts?” Alex pulled a ghoulish face that startled the couple at the table next to us.

I knew ghosts didn’t exist―that was precisely the problem.
Other
things
waited in the darkness. An old house, with history, in this area…
Yeah. Count me out.

“I just don’t fancy freezing my ass off all night in an old house at this time of year.”

“You’re both spoilsports,” muttered Alex. “Well, I’m going.”

“I don’t know how you find the time,” said Sarah. “I mean, you’re in what, seven societies?”

“Eight,” said Alex. “I joined archery last week.”

“Remind me not to come near when you’re practising,” I said. “You almost poked my eye out with a cocktail stick at the winter dance.”

“That was an accident!” Alex insisted, spilling coffee down her front. “And you made me do that,” she added.

I rolled my eyes. “Is it so you can dress up as Legolas for the next social?”

“No, it’s because I’m a badass with a crossbow.” She poked Sarah. “Cheer up, you. You start your new job tomorrow, right?”

Sarah nodded. “Breakfast shift at seven.”

“On a Sunday? Good luck with that. I’ll be up then, actually.”

“Learning to fight off zombie hordes with your badass crossbow?” I said.

“You got it,” said Alex. “Come on, Sarah, it won’t kill you. You’re not still having issues with that asshat boyfriend of yours, are you?”

“I…”

Unlike Alex, I was pretty good at telling when someone wanted to avoid being questioned. “Hey, is that Benedict Cumberbatch outside?”

Alex flew to the window so fast she’d have tumbled out of it if it had been open.

“What? Where’s Sherlock?” She turned accusing eyes on me.
Crap.
Well, I’d kind of asked for it.

“Um… maybe it was just someone who looked like him?” I shrugged, innocently. “I saw a guy at home once who looked exactly like David Tennant.”

“Did he have a blue box, by any chance?” said Alex.

“Sadly, no.”

It helped that Alex was as easily distracted as a hyperactive child. Sarah looked marginally more cheerful. I wished I could offer her advice, but as recent events showed all-too-well, relationships weren’t my area of expertise.

When we left Starbucks, my attempt to forget about last night went out of the window. Outside a local newsagents’, the paper’s headline read,
Blackstone Murderer Still Remains at Large.

In the aftermath of the interrogation, it had slipped my mind that there was someone out there murdering vampires. I picked up a copy of the paper, pretending to be interested in a supplement on books they had featured.

“Weird, that,” Alex commented, glancing at the headline. “I thought Blackstone was the safest place you could get. Nothing ever happens. Usually the headline’s about a runaway sheep.”

“It’s scary,” said Sarah. “What if it’s a serial killer?”

“I doubt it,” said Alex. “Still, we’re safe on campus.”

Safer than you think
, I thought. The university, like the village itself, was under the protection of the Venantium’s shield, which ensured no demonic creature could come within a ten-mile radius. But the killers hadn’t been demons. The victims’ energy had been drained, which suggested another vampire was responsible. A human.

Still. Why had Mr Melmoth attacked us? It made no sense. Apart from being Leo’s guardian, he’d also been a former Venantium employee, vampire―and, according to Leo, the only person ever to invent a cure for the vampire’s curse.
Maybe someone sent him mad. Maybe it was whoever killed him.
But why had he gone for
me
? I could see the sharp look in his eye as he’d said,
“You,”
just before he’d leapt at me. As though he’d seen me before. But how was that possible? And why would he want to kill me?

As if I needed anything else to worry about, one of the demons spoke to me as we left the newsagent’s.

“You might want to reconsider your choice.”
I pointedly ignored the cold voice that slid like ice-water down my spine.

“We can protect you, if you join us.”

“I’m not interested,” I muttered, quietly so no one else could hear.

“We know which shadow has your face.”

I turned my head to stare at the demon. “What? What does that mean?”

The creature merely blinked, violet eyes vanishing into the blackness. I sighed. Only the fortune-teller could match demons for cryptic statements.

“We are on your side. You can’t shut us out forever.”

“Stay away from me,” I said, and ran to catch up with my friends.

At first, when I’d started seeing demons everywhere, I’d been terrified of them. Whilst that fear had never completely gone away, I found them more of an annoyance than anything. They could appear anywhere, indoors or outside, and trying to ignore them was like avoiding my own shadow. Seeing them was, as Claudia put it, the curse of a connection to the Darkworld.

I just wished they’d stop trying to speak to me.

I skimmed through the newspaper as I sat on the bus back to Blackstone, but there wasn’t anything substantial in the article, only comments from fearful locals. If the Venantium knew any more, I wasn’t sure we could find out. I wondered what Leo was doing. Gods, I had to talk to him. Whatever he’d said, he had to be hurting. And those murderers were still out there somewhere, still targeting vampires.

When I got back to the flat, I found that I had a message from Cara demanding that I Skype her as soon as I got back. It was the most reliable method of communication here, since the mobile phone reception around campus was dodgy at best.
Crap. I haven’t called my parents this week, either.

“Ash!” said Cara, giving me a little wave on-screen. She’d recently taken the purple highlights out of her hair and as a result looked disarmingly plain, apart from her bright red t-shirt patterned with unicorns. “What do you think about those grave robberies?”

I groaned. I might have known Cara would pay attention to that particular story. “I have no idea,” I said. “Are they still happening?”

“Have you been reading the paper?”

“Er…” I scanned the newspaper I’d bought again. Sure enough, on the second page was a supplement about the desecration of several graves in a cemetery in Blackburn.
That’s the third place this week―and a town this time.

“Creepy, isn’t it? I have a theory,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess,” I said. “There’s a wannabe-Frankenstein on the loose, re-animating the dead?”

“You think so, too?”

I had to laugh. Really, though, who was I to say reviving dead bodies was impossible, after everything else I’d seen?

“I think someone has a sick sense of humour,” I said. “I’d say there’s definitely a gang involved, judging by the graffiti.”

That was what the picture in the paper showed, another gravestone defaced by words sprayed on in neon yellow paint.
The Ghouls Were Here.

“You know,” said Cara. “I’ve been researching. Ghouls are supposed to be flesh-eating demons that live in graveyards. Maybe there’s a connection?”