Bound by Shadows (Kissed by Shadows Series, Book 2) Page 5

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  I’ve been so caught up in my own drama, I haven’t even thought about how this is affecting everyone else.

  Regal shakes his head.

  “It’s not your fault. Anyway, I’ve been following her when she sneaks out at night just to keep an eye on her. But she always seems to lose me.”

  “She just needs some alone time,” I say.

  “Is that a hint for me to leave?” Regal asks.

  “What? No,” I say.

  And for once, I’m telling the truth. I really don’t want him to leave. I think of what he said as he helped me up from beside my father’s body.

  “Did you mean it?” I ask.

  “Mean what?”

  “When you said I wasn’t alone because I had you. The team. Was that true?”

  “Of course. We’re a family, Atlas. And you’re a part of that family. Whatever happens, you’ll always have us.”

  I’m embarrassed to notice that tears have once again filled my eyes. I feel them start to overflow, conscious on some level that the mascara Langston insisted on applying earlier will be running down my face in black rivers.

  Regal sees my tears and wraps his arms around me. I resist for a moment and then I relax. I lean into him and let the tears come. They come in hot rivulets, and my whole body shakes as I sob.

  Maybe it was exactly what I needed, because when the tears finally dry up and I pull back a little from Regal, I finally know exactly what’s been bothering me—why I feel like I can’t grieve for my father.

  “You know about my father, right? The way he was?”

  Regal nods.

  “I spent so much of my life pushing him away. I was ashamed of the way he behaved. Even in his last moments, I snapped at him because he was drunk. I didn’t think it mattered to me. I always thought I’d have time to fix our relationship, you know? And now it’s too late, and I feel so guilty.”

  Regal reaches out and wipes the stray tears from my cheeks.

  “Yeah. I get that. I always thought I’d have more time with my parents too. But you have nothing to feel guilty about. He was a grown man, and he knew his actions had consequences. And you both knew that really you loved each other despite everything.”

  “Yeah. We did,” I agree.

  We talk for a bit longer and as he leaves, Regal reminds me that the team is always here for me whenever I’m ready to talk or hang out. I thank him.

  I feel another wave of tears flood down my cheeks and I think I’m finally doing it. I’m actually grieving for my father. For the man he could have been.

  I glance out my bedroom window as I get dressed. Saudia and Tracey are back beneath their tree. They’re kissing again, and I see Saudia reach out and caress Tracey’s face as they kiss.

  I jump back, not wanting to see what might happen next.

  Saudia’s gentle touch reminds me of the way Kane touched my face in much the same way. It makes me think of how warm I felt inside. How safe. How loved. But it was all an act: the Keysu getting into my head and making me feel something for him. Something that might once have stopped me from killing him.

  My mind wanders back to the day he cooked for me. We sat eating his homemade stew and I thought he was so hot. And then I think of when we made love. He was passionate and gentle at the same time. I felt special. Like I was the only girl in the world.

  Man was I naïve. The team has given me a break on the “I told you so,” but they were right. There’s nothing good about Kane. Nothing worth saving. He used me. Made me think we had something, then humiliated and destroyed me.

  My warm feelings go cold as anger boils inside me. I feel like I might burst. I pick up a vase that sits on my dresser and I throw it hard at the wall. The smashing sound it makes as it connects sounds good. The shattered pieces crumble to the floor and I reach for the next trinket. And launch it with everything I have. And the next one. And the next.

  I can feel the anger and the hurt pouring out of me with each crash.

  After I’ve broken half of my possessions, I go over and begin to clean up the mess. As I’m on my knees, my door opens.

  “Sadie,” I say, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

  I get to my feet. Sadie eyes the pile of broken glass.

  “I wanted to make sure you were alright,” she says.

  She embraces me, and I allow her to hold me for a second then I stand back.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” she says.

  “You hated my father,” I snap.

  “So I did, but he was your father and I’m sorry for you.”

  All of the rage I thought I let go of creeps up to the surface. My anger pours out of me like a teapot as it whistles. And now it’s not directed at Kane. Because there’s a little part of me that thinks maybe I wasn’t so stupid to believe a demon was capable of loving me. Because he just might have been able to had he known that he wasn’t all dark. Maybe it wasn’t all an act. Maybe it was real, but the darkness won over the light because Kane didn’t believe he had the potential for light.

  “You’re sorry?” I snap. “Do you realize that between them, your children, they managed to wipe out my entire family? Why did you have to be so fucking stubborn? If you’d have just told Kane the truth, then maybe he wouldn’t have been so dark and broken.”

  “I’m sorry things turned out this way, Atlas, but try to understand. I didn’t want Kane to know the truth in case it just made him angry and snuffed out what little light there is inside of him.”

  “Light?” I shout. “Light? There’s no light inside of your son, Sadie. You made damn sure of that. Now just leave.”

  “Atlas… ” She tries again to reason with me.

  “THEY TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME!!!” I shout, no longer able to contain my anger.

  Sadie sighs. She can see there’s no use in trying to talk to me.

  “I’ll be in touch when we find out what the next object is. Until then—you know where I am if you need me.”

  I think I’m done with grieving. It’s been a long hard process that’s affected the team almost as much as it has affected me. I spent longer than I liked in the anger stage, but now, it’s all behind me. I think I’ve finally reached acceptance.

  The moment things changed happened one night when Regal stopped by to see how I was doing. We talked for a while, then he had to go to keep an eye on Remy, who is still wandering off at night.

  When he left, I started thinking about my father. I wanted one happy memory to cling to. It didn’t come easy, but once I found it, it replayed back to me in startling clarity.

  I was younger then, maybe ten or eleven. I was sitting at my bedroom window looking out at the playground across the street from our home. I watched the children there playing, carefree and laughing.

  I remember seeing a little girl fall and scrape her knees. Before the sobs came, her father bent down and scooped her up. He lifted her high in the air, laughing, and she joined him. He spun her around and they laughed together. I wished I had moments like that with my own father.

  I went downstairs in search of my father. I guess I needed to know if we would ever have that easy closeness. I found him sitting on the couch. He had a can of beer in his hand, but when he turned to smile at me, his eyes weren’t glazed over and when he spoke to me, his words weren’t slurred.

  “What’s up?” he asked me, grinning.

  I shrugged. “Nothing. I just wondered if we could go over to the playground.”

  He laughed. “You’re a bit old for that, honey. Why don’t we go bowling instead?”

  And just like that, he put the beer down. He put me before it. On the drive over, we laughed at the stupid things only a father and daughter laugh at. And I felt good. Loved.

  I remember what he said to me as we pulled into the parking lot at the bowling alley.

  “Atlas, there’ll come a time in your life when you’ll have to let me go. And I know it
won’t be easy, but you’re strong enough to do it. When the time comes, let go and live the life you’re destined to live.”

  I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but his words come back to me. I don’t think he was foretelling the future, although now his words seem strangely prophetic. I think even then he knew the path his life would go down. And he was telling me to let him go and live my own life.

  Suddenly, I’m filled with fire. I will honor my father’s wishes, and I will make him proud. I’ll do exactly what he said. I’ll let him go, and I’ll lead this team to victory. I will find the objects and sacrifice myself and literally save the world.

  I’ll be the leader my team needs. Even if that means turning off every emotion I’ve got.

  My epiphany seems to last. I can talk about my father without wanting to cry. I can think of Kane without smashing anything. I still feel an intense hatred for him, but I have it under control. Most tellingly, I can now laugh without feeling guilty.

  I’ve been training with the team again while we wait to find out what the next object is, and in theory, everything is back to normal. Except it isn’t. The team bent over backwards to help me through my darkest time, and I can’t just gloss over that.

  I’m back and they deserve to know it.

  I enter the training room, where the team is paired off, locked in hand-to-hand combat as they hone their fighting skills.

  “Can I talk to you all for a minute?” I shout over the noise of the training and the music that pumps out from a speaker.

  Remy, closest to the music system, turns it off and they all gather around me.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  I pause while I gather my thoughts.

  “I want to thank you all. I know these last few weeks have been hard on everyone, but none of you gave up on me when it would have been so easy to just leave me to my own self-pity. And I want to apologize to you all for not getting myself together sooner.”

  Murmurs start running through them, and I continue before they can interrupt.

  “I haven’t been a good leader. I put my heart before my head. I ignored all of your warnings, and consequently, I put us all in danger. No more. From now on, I am focused completely on our mission, and I’ll never make that mistake again.”

  Regal steps forward and embraces me. He steps back.

  “I think I speak for us all when I say we forgive you. We’ve all made mistakes and we’ve all gotten through them. Together.”

  The team nods and agrees. I feel relieved that they’re being so forgiving.

  “So can we say I told you so now?” Perry pipes up.

  I laugh.

  “Only if you want an ass whooping,” I answer.

  “So, what happens when you have to go up against Kane, because you know it’s going to happen,” Quinn says.

  “The same thing that will happen to any demon I come up against—death,” I tell her, stone-faced.

  I’m working at the bookstore. I have done my training for the day and I needed to get out of the house. My head is flooded with thoughts of Kane. Memories of the good times we had together interspersed with flashes of anger at how he betrayed me.

  I would have gone mad being cooped up in the house tonight, so I came here. It’s always been my sanctuary and I feel much calmer than I did a couple of hours ago when I arrived.

  It’s late now. After 10:30 pm, and I don’t think we’ll be getting any more customers. Everything is tidy. All of the books are returned to their rightful places and I’ve done some extra work on the inventory. I decide to close up and head home now, feeling better.

  I go into the back of the store and grab my purse. As I move through the room, I hear the bell above the door ring.

  “Sorry, we’re closed,” I call out.

  The bell remains silent. Whoever it is isn’t leaving. I sigh and head back to the shop floor.

  “We’re closed,” I repeat as I step behind the counter.

  “But I think this meeting is way overdue already. Don’t you?” says a male voice.

  I sigh again. I may feel calmer than I did a couple of hours ago, but I’m in no mood to play games.

  I step around the counter and see a man standing just off to the side of one of the shelves. He’s surrounded by shadows and I can’t make out his face.

  “And you are?” I demand.

  “My name is Talon,” he says.

  He steps out of the shadows.

  “I’m the guy who’s going to make a lampshade out of your skin.”

  Make a lampshade out of me? I’d love to see him try it.

  I still have so much anger swirling around inside of me since my father’s death—no, not death, murder—and using it against Talon, who was a huge part of the problem, might just help me to feel back to my normal self.

  I look at him and smile a humorless grin that makes him raise an eyebrow.

  “Bring it on,” I say in a low voice.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Was I really naïve enough to think I could scare him into backing off?

  I’m not sure. Maybe.

  Whatever I thought would happen, I didn’t expect him to launch himself through the air, coming straight at my head.

  But that’s what he did.

  I take a step back, annoyed to already be forced to retreat. I back up another step, putting a bit of distance between us. Talon and I circle each other. I’m thinking, desperately looking around for something I can use against him.

  I get the impression he doesn’t need to think. He knows exactly what he’s going to do. He’s playing cat and mouse, and I’m most definitely the mouse. I don’t imagine him to be very patient, so I have to act now.

  I try to cast my mind back to all of my training, but it’s gone. My mind is blank except for the insistent little voice that is screaming for me to do something. Why won’t that voice shut up? How can it expect me to do anything when it’s distracting me?

  A plan forms in my mind. It’s not the best plan, but it’s all I have. I inch towards the nearest shelving unit. I plan to bring it down on Talon, but one tug tells me it’s too heavy for me to move. Instead, I pull a book off the shelf and throw it, hard, at Talon.

  It clips him in the center of his forehead. I follow it up with another and another. Each book hits the mark, but all it does is incense him.

  A roar escapes him, deep and terrifying, and he leaps towards me again. I keep hurling books as he advances, moving aside at the last second. He crashes into the shelving unit, and it goes sprawling, followed by Talon. He lands hard on top of it and I have a moment where I think I might have actually stopped him.

  I’m wrong. It doesn’t even slow him down. He’s back on his feet in seconds, and now he’s angry. Before it was just a game to him, but now it’s personal.

  “You little bitch,” he sneers at me.

  He throws a wall of flames in my direction. I duck before my head can be incinerated, but he follows it up with flames more intense than the last from his other hand. I move to the side quickly enough to avoid being engulfed in the flames, but not quickly enough to avoid them altogether.

  I feel a searing agony run through my body as my left arm is set ablaze; the flames burn slowly. A pained cry escapes my lips as I bat at the flames desperately with my other hand. I manage to put out the fire, but there’s nothing I can do to ease the pain.

  Talon senses my weakness, and he moves in towards me, slowly, playing with me again. I want to stand my ground, but the anger inside me is gone, replaced by the notion I’m going to die here. And it will be slow and painful.

  I bite my lip when a whimper escapes me as I back away from Talon. It’s like a red flag to a bull. His lips peel back in a grin filled with such evil that a shudder runs through me.

  Talon reaches me and presses his body against mine, pinning me between his weight and the countertop behind me. He looks at me critically for a second, and he’s so close I can feel his breath on my face when he speaks.


  “Yeah, I get why Kane wanted to fuck you,” he says.

  He laughs, a sound filled with scorn.

  “But to think you believed he actually loved you.”

  My anger flares back up at the mention of Kane and my own stupidity. I’m gripped in a blind rage. It stops me from overthinking—now I’m running on instinct alone.

  Talon reaches out and runs a fingernail down my face. His touch is gentle. A parody of a loving touch.

  I reach blindly behind me, groping along the countertop until I find something to use. I grasp the first heavy thing my hand touches and I bring it down on Talon’s head.

  I’m pleased to see it was a coffeepot. It’s been turned off for the last twenty minutes, but the coffee inside is still hot enough that he screams when it shatters and the coffee runs down his face.

  He backs away from me, his hands clutching his face. Blood and coffee pour from under his hands, and bits of broken glass fall to the floor with an almost musical pinging sound.

  He takes his hands away. His forehead is cut and blisters are already starting to form on his nose, cheeks, and chin.

  He roars again, and another roar joins him. The second roar comes from me. We both leap at the same time, and we collide in midair, going down in a rolling motion of limbs. We come to a stop and I’m on top of him.

  I act fast, while he’s still a bit dazed from the burns. My training is coming back and I think of what Quinn taught me about manipulating objects around me. I concentrate and wave a hand.

  I’m rewarded with a shelf of books raining down on Talon’s already messed-up face. He cries out in pain as they make contact, one after the other in a steady stream. He bucks and writhes beneath me, but I hold my ground, pinning him to the floor.

  The shelf empties. I can feel my temper starting to turn to triumph. Talon is bleeding from his nose and lip now too, and his face looks like a mass of agony. I raise my hands and begin raining down a succession of punches to his face.

  He tries to throw me off, but the adrenaline is coursing through my body, making me stronger than I should be. It fills me with confidence and it drives me to end this thing.