Born in the Shadows (In the Shadows Series Book 1) (5 page)

              Cordelia reconsidered her initial assessment of Mary. She no longer intimidated her because it was clear she was completely out of her mind.

              “You expect me to believe I’m a vampire?”             

              “Yes. When Nicky found you, he knew you were dying. He didn’t want that to happen and the only way to save you was to change you into one of us.”

              “Us? You and me, we’re both vampires,” Cordelia said incredulously before shaking her head in amusement. “Well that’s different but I suppose if you had to choose your own coma adventure, being a vampire isn’t too bad. Way better than being a zombie or werewolf.”

              “Cordelia, I am serious. You are not in a coma. This is the real world.”

              “Oh I get it. You want me to believe that this is real so I stay in my coma. You are like the manifestation of my injuries or something. Well I’m not going to fall for it.”

              She headed towards the door but Mary was there in an instant, blocking the doorway. Cordelia jumped back in shock. Definitely a coma. There was no way that even an Olympic sprinter could move that fast.

              “Cordelia, I know that this is hard to understand and I’m probably screwing this up but you have to listen to me. This is not a coma or a dream or a fantasy. This is all real, you need to believe me.”

              “Prove it then.”

              Mary tilted her head to the side, as if she was trying to size Cordelia up. She barely registered Mary’s hand lashing out before her head snapped back and her cheek began to sting.

              Cordelia’s own hand raised to touch her warmed flesh. “You slapped me!”

              Mary just shrugged. “You told me to prove it to you. You can only feel pain in the real world.”

              Cordelia rubbed her burning cheek. “You could have just pinched me!”

              “I figured I’d do a pre-emptive strike in case you were going to get hysterical.”

              Cordelia smiled in spite of herself. It was weird. Despite her having just gone all Joan Collins on her, her gut told her that Mary meant her no real harm. She was also starting to kind of like Mary. Even with the vampire delusions and the painful slapping.

              Speaking of which, what the hell? Clearly, something really weird was going on if she was feeling pain and damned if she knew what it was. If this was the real world then she needed to understand what was happening. If it was all the product of a coma, she needed to go wherever her subconscious led her. She certainly wasn’t going to get any answers by arguing with Mary. 

              “Okay, so I’m a vampire now--”

              “Shadow Walker,” Mary interrupted. “The V-word doesn’t always play so well around our kind. Something about human popular culture poisoning our image.”

              “Sorry, Shadow Walker. Now, you said that Nicky found me and he changed me into a Shadow Walker. How exactly did he do that?”

              “He had to drink your blood and then he cut himself and fed the blood back to you.”

              “Well, that’s just gross,” Cordelia said, wrinkling her nose in disgust and Mary laughed.

              “Maybe but it is the only way to bring you back from the dead. Once you had your own blood mixed with his blood in your body, it brought about the change.”

              “Tell me about the change.”

              “As Anne explains it, when Shadow Walker blood is mixed with human blood, it begins to mutate the human cells. It takes a full cycle of the moon before it is complete but during that time, the blood heals your body of all the damage done to it while you were human. It also rewires your brain to heighten your senses and your emotional receptors. Then there is the increased strength, speed and endurance. Oh and of course the fangs.”

              Cordelia let it all swirl around her brain, sorting it out as best she could. She supposed it made sense from a technical standpoint. “So I’m a Shadow Walker because I have mutant blood cells now.”

              “You sound disappointed.”

              She shrugged her shoulders, trying to think about why she felt that way. “I guess I just thought that it would involve magic or something. It all sounds very scientific.”

              “Just because science can explain it doesn’t mean it still isn’t magical.”

              “That’s very deep,” Cordelia commented dryly.

              Mary laughed and Cordelia smiled. It felt good to make this elegant woman laugh. It made her feel like she was being accepted, something she rarely felt in her life. Her mother’s abuse had convinced her that other women were always judging her and finding her wanting. She could feel a lump growing in her throat and she swallowed repeatedly to try to clear it.

              God was her brain completely fried? She shouldn’t get choked up at the idea of this stranger laughing at some lame joke she made. What the hell was wrong with her?

              “So what else does being a Shadow Walker mean?” she asked as a way to distract herself from her emotional rollercoaster.

              “You will not age and unless you are decapitated, consumed by fire or your heart is destroyed, you will not die.”

              “Wooden stakes don’t make you go poof?”

              “Oh no, those can do us in but not because they are made of wood. A stake, a sword, even a shotgun blast at point blank range, it doesn’t really matter. All of them can do enough damage that the blood can’t heal the heart fast enough.”

              “I’ll remember to avoid those. Is there anything else that can kill me?”

              “Sunlight will burn you and if you are exposed too long, you will emolliate.”

              She glanced at the windows. “That explains the heavy drapes. What about the whole cross and holy water thing?”

              “Just a myth. We aren’t demons so religious iconography won’t affect us.”

              “Do I still have a reflection?”

              “Yes, good thing too. We get to see how different we look after the change.”

              “I look different?”

              Mary nodded her head in the direction of the bathroom. “See for yourself.”

              Cordelia’s stomach flip-flopped as she headed to the bathroom. She had never been very fond of her plain Jane self, what had becoming a Shadow Walker done to her? Sure, Mary was gorgeous but she had probably been perfect to begin with. Cordelia was all lumps and bumps and frizz. Plus she had been pasty white as a human, she probably looked see-through as a Shadow Walker.

              When she stood before the large mirror in the opulent bathroom, she was shocked at what she saw there. The no reflection theory was definitely a myth but the face that stared back at her was foreign yet familiar. The last time she checked, her hair had been a dull orange that was inconveniently in that middle space between curly and wavy. Now it looked like spun copper and fell across her shoulders in large curls. She ran a hand cautiously over the curls, not quite believing that they were hers. Oh yeah, they were definitely hers and they were silky soft.

              She smiled at her reflection and saw that her canines were now sharp points. She reached up and poked at them with her finger, wincing as the needle sharp tip pierced her skin. She put the wounded digit in her mouth on instinct and the taste of her own blood bloomed on her tongue. She felt a shifting in her gums and she watched mesmerized as her teeth lengthened, the tips poking from beneath her lips.

              She continued her assessment of her reflection, noticing the change in her eyes. They were still blue but now they shone with an iridescent light that made her irises seem like they were rings of blue diamond. Her freckles had faded away and the pimple that she had discovered that morning was gone. She raised a hand to stroke her cheeks and the skin was baby smooth. All the imperfections that she had always seen were erased, as if she had been given back the skin she had been born with. 

              “Like I said, the change heals the entire breakdown your body has gone through during your human life.”

              She glanced over to see Mary leaning against the doorjamb. “The superficial things like scars and freckles heal during the first twenty four hours. Any damage to your heart and lungs from bad eating or smoking will be repaired over the next month. The only imperfection left will be your clan mark.”

              Mary raised her hand to her neck and traced her fingertips over a pink scar there. Cordelia glanced to the mirror and spotted the same mark on her own neck.

              “The mark is used by our kind to identify which clan we belong to,” Mary said.

              “What do you mean by clan? Like a family?”

              “In a way, yes we are a family. There are twelve clans within the Shadow Walker race, each one descended from one of the Old Ones. They were the beings that created the first Shadow Walkers.”

              She knew she should probably ask Mary to expand on that whole creation of Shadow Walkers thing but she couldn’t keep her eyes off her reflection. It was as if she was hypnotized by her own face, a sweet calm coming over her as she gazed at herself. It was strange, for most of her life, she had avoided mirrors, always disappointed in what she saw there but now she couldn’t tear herself away from her reflected image. 

              “Why do I look so different?” The words came out unbidden, whispered in wonderment.

              “The ethereal beauty thing is a trait of our race. Anne thinks it is part of making us efficient predators. We can make ourselves appear incredibly attractive to humans and lure them to us. You are new so you’ve got the dial up to eleven, even a blind human would be drawn to you. Eventually you’ll learn to control it and use it to your advantage when hunting for a human to feed on.”

              The way Mary talked about humans sent a shiver of trepidation running through her. “Does this mean I’m evil? That I don’t have a soul?”

              “No, not at all,” Mary said with a wince, standing straight up and trying to reassure her. “Sorry, the predator part probably sounded horrible. Anne just tends to talk like a scientist with her whole top of the food chain/survival of the fittest crap and I guess it’s rubbed off on me. Like I said, we aren’t demons, we still have our souls. Our kind is capable of both good and evil, just like it was when we were human.”

              “So I’m not the walking dead?”

              “Well, technically, you did die. Your heart stopped beating, your blood stopped flowing so for all intents and purposes, you were dead. But once Nicky fed you the blood, you were brought back to life. The blood started your heart and it is what keeps it beating now.”

              So she had died but she wasn’t dead anymore. She had a soul, a beating heart and a reflection but also supernatural eyes, clear skin and a new set of fangs.  

              “All of this is very confusing,” she replied, reaching up rub her temples where she could feel the beginning of a headache brewing.

              Mary smiled at her sympathetically. “Easiest way to deal with it is just forget everything you learned in the movies.”

              “If you guys, or I guess,
us
guys aren’t evil, why stay hidden from humans?”

              “Because it would harm both humans and Shadow Walkers if we didn’t. If our existence was common knowledge, humans would know that our blood can bring them back to life. Despite our higher thought processes, Shadow Walkers and humans are animals at heart. Our survival instinct overrides our morals and emotions. Humans would want to use our kind to keep themselves alive and we would want to fight them off. It would be carnage for both sides and in the end we would destroy both races.”

              Cordelia could see the logic in that. Throughout history, humans had exploited and destroyed each other. They would surely do the same to the Shadow Walkers if they had the opportunity.

              Now was probably not the best time to be getting philosophical. She had to focus on herself and her immediate problems, like what the hell she was supposed to do now that she was a Shadow Walker.

              “So what happens now?”

              “Why don’t you get dressed and come downstairs to meet everyone else first,” Mary said before moving back into the bedroom and Cordelia followed. “We can talk about the rest later.”

              Mary went to the armoire and opened one of the drawers, pulling out a pair of sweatpants. “I know they aren’t high fashion but we aren’t very formal around here.”

              “Better than being pants less,” Cordelia quipped before pulling on the sweatpants.

              Mary led them out into a long hallway with dark wood paneling and plush green carpet. There were small tables with vases full of fresh flowers and water color paintings placed between the doors that lined the hallway. She counted at least six doors and she wondered how many rooms there were in this house.

              “How big is this place?”