Return to the Shadows Read online

  Twelve months later and I still didn’t quite know what to call Terlain. The “magic place” did have a nice ring to it, I decided, navigating through the gold-trimmed forest with ease now. I wondered if we would see Faith’s dog Wilson again. So far he hadn’t made himself known to Ashley and myself. He must have been in the yard, maybe even in the house, I realized. I hoped that he was still alive. Even though a year had passed, Wilson hadn’t looked to be all that old, so chances were good that he was still enjoying good health. The canine would forever hold a special place in my heart—he was the first friend I’d made in this strange new land.

  The trees were thinner here; soon we would hit the clearing, and Faith’s ranch-style house would be due north at the far edge. The town of Lerna would be just beyond the ridge behind the house. While it would probably never be called a bustling metropolitan hub, Lerna was not exactly tiny either. It was one of those family friendly places that had managed to find a happy medium between overcrowded and middle-of-nowhere. If Faith and her husband couldn’t be located at the house, for whatever reason, Ashley and I would be able to find food and lodging for the night in town. From there, we would move on, taking the safe-zone avenues to Grandview where, with any luck, we would find Bob and Marta...and Mark. We would be safe with them, I knew, shoving all thoughts of Mark aside for the moment. Screw John Hanlen and his band of merry, crooked cops, because for all intents and purposes, Ashley and I had just dropped off the face of the Earth.

  It was harder not to worry about Mike; maybe we had managed to evade danger back home, but my brother had remained in the thick of it. He had the dual task of not only sorting through the mess, but cleaning it up. I prayed that he would get through the experience in one piece. Logically, I knew enough about survival and teamwork to say my quick but heartfelt prayer and mentally move on, pushing all thoughts of the family who waited back home—and the trials they faced—from my mind. Worrying wouldn’t do them one bit of good, I knew from experience, and in fact, it would distract me at a time when I desperately needed to keep my wits about me. So I had to trust Mike to take care of himself and do the same for Ashley and myself.

  A break in the trees up ahead signaled the end of the forest and I exhaled silently, remembering that we were, quite literally, not out of the woods yet. A large tree that looked to be a maple on steroids provided adequate cover, and I tucked Ashley between the base of the tree and my own body, quietly instructing her to stay low and stay silent while I carefully perused our surroundings. Nothing could be heard throughout the forest. No leaves crunching underfoot, no swish of blades hacking through foliage, nothing. It looked as though we were alone. The guards had evidently decided to move on. Not surprising, I reasoned. After all, it had been a year. They probably figured we wouldn’t be bold—or foolhardy—enough to return to Terlain, but if Kahn found out we were here… I squelched the terrifying thought before it could be fully formed. Kahn wasn’t going to find out. He would never know we had dared return to Terlain, I vowed, pressing closer to Ashley and easing out of the forest, away from the cover of the towering, gilded vegetation, taking the first step into the open meadow.

  “Ashley,” I whispered. “Do you see the house on the hill? The blue house with the yellow flowers lining the walkway?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where we’re going, but we have to be quick about it. When I say, we run for it and we don’t stop until we’re at the front door.”

  “No, please, I don’t want to go back to that house again.”

  “It’s perfectly fine, I promise—” I halted in mid-sentence, mid-step as the impact of her tearful whisper hit home. “What do you mean ‘again’? You’ve been to that house before?”

  “The bad men took me here, to the man and the mean lady…the ones who were supposed to take care of me. I slept downstairs a lot. I didn’t like it there. It was dark.” Her lip quivered.

  Downstairs. My blood began to boil as I regarded Faith’s single-story home through narrowed eyes.

  Unless homes were built drastically different in Terlain, I could only assume that “downstairs” was synonymous with “basement,” or even “crawlspace” or “cellar.” No matter what one chose to call it, it was in no way a suitable place for any sane person with a shred of humanity within them to put a child.

  Faith…I thought, glaring at the deceptively tranquil homestead across the meadow. I had rescued my daughter from a woman I had confided in, trusted, and considered a friend. No wonder Kahn had found it so pitifully easy to track my whereabouts last year. He’d had inside information, I now realized bitterly.

  Anger burned bright and hot within me, and I wondered briefly what price had made it worthwhile for the blonde devil to betray a confidant, and worse, an innocent child?

  “Mama, I don’t want to go to that house. Please don’t leave me with them.”

  “Leave you?” I shook away my rage and knelt down to take hold of her thin, trembling shoulders. “I am never going to leave you. Ever. I didn’t know Faith and her husband were the ones helping the bad men, the ones who took you from the orphanage. But now I do know and you’ll never have to see those people ever again. Come on, let’s get away from here, Ash. I know another way to the city. Back into the forest we go.”

  “Okay,” she nodded, relief evident in her tiny form.

  We skirted a wide path around the meadow, walking the forest’s edge, staying within sight of the open meadow but still well within the cover of tall trees that edged the woods. The detour cost us nearly an extra half hour of walking on feet that were already aching, but I considered the added time and effort well worth it. It wouldn’t do at all for me to run into Faith and claw her eyes out in her own front yard, in plain view of my daughter, no less. I was still seething inside over what she had done to Ashley. It was inconceivable to me how anyone could bring such harm to a child, and the slight was not one I was inclined to let go of anytime in the near future. No, what Faith and her husband had done was simply unforgivable.

  We walked on in silence for another half mile or so, each absorbed in our own thoughts and focused on putting one foot in front of the other in order to reach our destination. Finally, we came upon Lerna’s edge, cresting the hill and pausing to look down at the town not far below. It took all of two minutes to realize something was off with the scene that greeted us.

  “Is that it?” Ashley spoke up from beside me, pointing to the deserted streets of the town.

  “Yes, this is it, but…” I trailed off, taking in the eerie silence and lackluster appearance of what I remembered to be a brilliant city.

  “It doesn’t look like much of a town. Where are all the people?”

  “I don’t know.” I frowned.

  I noticed the fence almost immediately. The low countryside-style fencing that had once glowed with magic was dim, plain, and ordinary in the harsh light of day. The spell cast so many years ago by the Matrons was supposed to be infinite and very strong. During the war of years past, the surviving townspeople had erected the rudimentary fences to surround their towns and many of their roadways.

  Blessed by the Matrons, the fences shimmered and glowed with a life of their own, forming an impenetrable barrier against Kahn and his beasts and the wild things that lived deep in the woods. None of the evil the people of Terlain had fought so valiantly could touch them after that, so long as they stayed within the boundaries of those fences, or protected zones, as they were commonly called. How had the spell cast by the powerful elder Matrons been broken? Had they removed the protective barrier themselves and, if so, why? More important, what had become of the city?

  My head spun as Ashley’s question and observation hit home. She was right, there were no people milling about the streets below.

  “Come on, we’ve got to get a closer look.” I pulled her along beside me, stopping to trace the carvings in the fence, becoming all the more alarmed when I felt no tingling sensation along my fingertips.

  Something
was very wrong in Lerna.

  ***

  The city was ruined. We stood in the center of what served as Lerna’s Main Street, or rather, what used to serve as the town square, I reflected with a sick sense of disbelief. The place had become a ghost town. There simply wasn’t much left, I grimly acknowledged. It looked as though a tornado had ravaged the city; that or an army, and personally, I was betting on the army. Windows were shattered all along the street, shards of glass littering the once neatly swept walkways. Entire store fronts were ruined, their contents ransacked.

  Looting…Kahn’s men had been here, I realized in an instant, fear pooling in my stomach. It was hard saying what else had ambushed the city; enormous three-toed prints were visible in the dirt, plants hopelessly crushed under what must have been unbearably heavy footfall. I didn’t want to know what weighed probably upwards of three hundred pounds and had three giant toes, and certainly didn’t intend to stick around long enough to find out. But the fact remained, Ashley and I needed supplies and I desperately needed rest.

  Taking in the massive street sign pole that hung snapped in two in the middle of the road, I mentally kissed six hours of restful sleep goodbye. In fact, the chance of getting off my feet at all in the near future was looking slim. But at the very least we would need to eat. The field rations I’d packed at the start of our journey were running low, and Ashley would need a more balanced meal very soon. Not only that, I admitted with a resigned sigh, but we were nearly out of water. Running in the other direction was simply not an option. Hell, I thought, traveling on foot is not an option, not without the protection the fences would have afforded. We would have to steal a car…if there was one left behind that hadn’t been ruined.

  If it had fuel. If it had the keys in it.

  I rubbed my temple with the hand that Ashley wasn’t clinging to like ivy, feeling a headache forming behind my eyes. Too many ifs…I didn’t like this one bit. We moved silently through the deserted streets and I half expected to see tumbleweeds blow across the broken road in front of us. We crossed to the sidewalk, trying to stay in the shadows cast by the tall trees that graced the once prestigious residential neighborhood we found ourselves wandering through. This, I decided, was likely as good as it was going to get. Any one of the tall houses that lined the street would contain the food and other supplies we would require. But which house to break into? They all appeared to be long since deserted, grass overgrown, gardens untended, dark, dingy windows facing the street.

  The cars, I considered, coming to a stop and gathering Ashley close to my side, would determine which house I ultimately forced my way into. We needed something reliable, not too old, no bright colors, and it had to be sturdy. A tank, I thought with renewed enthusiasm, peering up and down the block. Failing that, an SUV would have to do, I decided as I spotted the midnight blue sport utility vehicle about six or seven houses down. It even came equipped with a brush guard, I noted on closer inspection. Hopefully it had plenty of fuel in the tank, enough to get us at least fifty or sixty miles away from Lerna. Ideally, the tank would be full, eliminating at least one potential problem. If the roads and towns all the way to Grandview looked anything like this place, we wouldn’t be able to stop and fill the tank.

  Starting out with a full tank meant we could make the trip to Bob and Marta’s without stopping. It could mean the difference between life and death. If Grandview had been affected…well, I didn’t want to think about that, not just yet anyway. Truth was, if Grandview had been affected, if their fences had failed too, we would be screwed. Well, maybe not screwed, necessarily, but it would certainly complicate matters.

  I turned my attention to the house after trying the handle on the SUV and finding it to be locked.

  Great, I thought dismally, I have to find the keys, too, in addition to breaking into the house quietly and gathering the required supplies. I could only hope the people who used to live here were neat freaks, or at least religiously hung their keys in one spot each and every time. The old adage “don’t borrow trouble” flitted through my mind.

  “Ash, I need to go into that house and pack a few things that we’ll need for the rest of our trip,” I began, unsure of how to explain to the child that she was about to see me carry out acts that, back home, would have landed me in a jail cell.

  “But nobody’s home,” she protested, pointing at the darkened property looming before us.

  “Right,” I nodded, waiting for comprehension to dawn on her.

  “You’re going to steal stuff from that house?”

  “Yes,” I patiently explained. “But it’s okay—just this once—because we have to. Do you understand the difference? The people who used to live here look to be long gone; they don’t need anything that was left in the house, and I doubt they’re coming back for any of it anyway. We, on the other hand, are here now, and we need food and water and a change of clothes.”

  “But we have clothes,” she said with a frown.

  “We need clothing from here, from the magic place. The people here dress differently than we do and we should blend in, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So.” I smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “We need to take a few things, which normally would be wrong; but right now, under the circumstances, is okay and perfectly acceptable. Does that make sense?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay, let me put it another way. Do you want to stay here in this city?” I calmly asked.

  “No.” Her response was automatic.

  “Neither do I. So we’ll do what we have to in order to get out of here, and soon,” I added, noticing the sun sinking lower on the horizon. I had to move quickly if we were going to be out of Lerna by nightfall. “You’re going to stay here while I go in, Ash.” I broke the news to her in a tone that booked no argument. “I want you to duck into these bushes right here next to the porch,” I continued smoothly, walking with her to the thick cluster of shrubbery gone wild.

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes. And you are not to move from this spot for any reason, no matter what you see or what you hear.”

  “Fine,” she pouted, minuscule but mutinous.

  “I mean it; I can’t stress enough how important this is—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it—stay put,” she sighed, climbing into the vegetation and wrapping her arms tightly around her knees.

  “Right. Good girl,” I nodded, diplomatically opting not to take her to task for her attitude. Truth be told, I was relieved that she hadn’t yet broken into hysterics, which, while not her usual style, wouldn’t have been an unnatural reaction to all that she’d endured in less than forty-eight hours. Dramatics wouldn’t even have been an abnormal response to what I was currently asking her to do. Hating the fact that I had to make her hide in a tangle of overgrown landscaping to wait for my return, I arranged the foliage around her until I was satisfied that she was well hidden from view before stepping back onto the porch, promising to hurry as I wrapped stiff fingers around a brass knob and turned it, testing.

  As I had figured, the knob turned only a fraction of an inch, if that. It was locked.

  “No surprise there,” I sighed, eyeing the wide window that faced the porch. From the looks of it, that particular window would get me into what appeared to be some sort of living room or parlor. If luck held any favor at all for me today, the window would not be locked. I realized that it probably was, but I couldn’t help but hope for the small miracle. The less noise I was forced to make, the better. The town looked deserted, and it very well may have been, but it was always better to err on the side of caution, and intuition told me that we weren’t the only living things skulking about the city. If we had been detected, we would have been attacked by now, I reasoned, calming myself by degrees while I applied increasing pressure on the dusty window frame. Although some beasts, I remembered, only came out at night. Though I couldn’t recall the name right then, they were Terlain’s answer to Earth’s mythi
cal vampires. Except vampires were creatures of legend, stories passed down from generation to generation that made for some good, spooky entertainment but little else. Terlain’s “vampires,” on the other hand, were very real and very dangerous.

  Though not typically found so far north, it was hard to tell what creatures were where, considering the breach in Lerna’s fence. With no way of knowing if the breach was an isolated incident or if other places in Terlain had experienced similar glitches, it was impossible to say what was where at this point.

  As far as I knew—and my knowledge on Terlain was admittedly limited—the beast had always been native to southern regions like the coastal city of Coztal. The million dollar question was, did the beasts remain in their typical warm climate out of necessity or geography? Had they once been indigenous to other parts of Terlain and been trapped in the southern hemisphere at some point for some reason? If the fences failed to keep them repelled would they—could they—make it this far, and more important, could they survive? If so, for how long?

  I exhaled and then took several deep breaths as my efforts finally paid off; the dingy window slid up in its casing with a screech that seemed to ricochet through the unnatural stillness that permeated the once vibrant neighborhood. As noise levels went, it was probably the lesser of two evils, I admitted, wincing at the shrill sound. At least I had not been forced to break out the heavy pane of glass. If there was anything out there roaming the city in search of blood, then glass shattering would have been the equivalent of hanging out a welcome mat to every predator within a two mile radius. If the beasts were inhabiting the city, I thought with renewed fear, then it wouldn’t matter how much noise I made or didn’t make. We would have already been spotted. If they had found their way to Lerna, they were probably watching us right now. Ashley’s hiding spot would prove useless, and I had no idea if my bullets would stop them. Logically, it should work, but I’d long since learned not to take anything for granted in this strange land. In Terlain, the phrase “expect the unexpected” took on a terrible new meaning.