Through the Shadows (16 page)

Tori began to run toward the big black monster with every intention of dragging Lydia from behind the wheel, but the car shot out of the parking lot, tires squealing.

She sighed in frustration and crossed her fingers that her agent didn’t take out anybody’s mail box along the road leading to her mother’s house.

Even though she had spent more time than she thought she would at the store, Tori got to her mother’s house before the other two women. She sat in the car a few minutes but decided to go on in when she heard her dog barking. She fished her mother’s extra key out of her purse and went inside to wait.

Max greeted her with enthusiasm bordering on mania. The great thing about having a dog is you always have someone happy to see you, grateful that you’re home at last.

When the two older women hadn’t shown up thirty minutes later, Tori figured Lydia had strong-armed Sharon into either stopping by a liquor store, or worse, another club. She’d wait a little longer, then leave and call them again when she got home.

“Wanna go for a short walk, Max? Please tell me you didn’t have an accident somewhere in my mom’s house. No, don’t tell me. If you spoke to me it’d be the last thing I need to knock me over the edge. Are you smilin’ at me? You think that’s funny, do you? Let me grab your leash and we’ll hit the sidewalk.”

Max began to jump up and down, tongue flopping out of his grinning mouth and barking little yips of happiness when he saw his neon blue leash.

“No matter what, Max, you can always make me laugh.”

The skies had turned a vicious leaden color. She glanced upward and remembered hearing about the threat of rocky weather.

“C’mon Max, do your thing. We need to get back inside before this storm hits. Hurry Buddy, pee!”

A gust of wind raced past her, blowing her hair over her head, covering her face.

“Max, either you do it soon or forever hold your pee.”

A small funnel of wind, a dust devil, screamed into them and nearly pushed Tori into the tree that Max had finally decided was his spot. Living in Oklahoma makes you sit up and take notice of
anything
that resembles a
funnel
of wind, even if it’s a small one. After all, the big tornadoes begin with a small funnel.

“Okay, that’s it, Bubba. I hope you got it out of your system ‘cause you’re headed back to the house with me—now. I love you but I ain’t gettin’ blown away for you.”

It only took half the time to make the journey back inside Sharon’s house. It helped when Tori had a strong wind at her back, pushing her along. It’s as if Mother Nature was saying, “Get inside. Hurry up now—go!”

Tori grabbed the silver tea kettle from the stove and filled it with water. As she waited for it to heat, she filled Max’s food and water dishes. Max showed his appreciation with a head rub against her leg.

In the bedroom, Tori took a pair of faded jeans out of a dresser drawer. She kept some of her old clothes at her mom’s just for occasions like this so she never had to bring anything with her if she spent the night. She smiled when the bright beams of headlights flashed across the window. She tugged on her tennis shoes as fast as she could, wanting to be at the door to open it so her mom wouldn’t have to use her key.

Tori opened the door with a flourish, a big goofy smile on her face.

“It’s about time! I put on the tea…”

He was a large man with a receding hairline generously peppered with gray. He held his hat in his hands, unconsciously turning it in circles. Tori’s gaze traveled from the silver badge over his heart to the sadness in his blue eyes.

“Good evenin’, Ma’am. Are you Victoria Stanfield?”

Her heartbeat accelerated and suddenly she had trouble breathing due to the anvil sitting on her chest.

“Yes.”

“Mizz Stanfield, I’m sorry to have to tell you this…”

Tori took a step back, nearly stepping on Max who was curiously silent as he, too, stared at the stranger. She heard, as well as saw, the neighbor’s trash can rattle down the street. She noticed that trees and neighboring houses faded into an encroaching sheet of tears.

It seemed the only thing she could do was shake her head.

“No… no.”

“Ma’am? Uh, Victoria? I’m so sorry. There was an accident…”

Tori held her hand up in self-defense against the words the state trooper was determined to say. He continued in a hesitant tone.

“Lydia Sommers and your mother were involved in a collision with a tractor-trailer rig out on the expressway, near the Utica exit.”

Tori couldn’t speak. She prayed he would stop.

“The driver of the truck sustained only a few scrapes and bruises, but the ladies…”

She managed to hitch a breath.

“How bad is it?”

“It’s bad, Miz Stanfield.”

Tori felt as if she’d slipped into a dream state, an alternate universe where nothing could ever hurt her.

“By ‘bad’, do you mean they’re terribly injured?”

With a sad look, he acknowledged the prophetic confirmation of her worst fear written across her pale face.

“No, honey, I mean it’s as bad as it gets.”

The voice she heard felt as if it came from someone else’s vocal cords, spoken through an ethereal being’s lips.

A frozen spear of pain greater than she’d ever known pierced her heart.

“Which one is dead?”

A part of her brain argued this was all a lie, but her heart began to contract with the acceptance of the truth. But hope is a strong emotion, hard to let go of.

“I’m so sorry, Honey. It’s both of them. Both of them are dead.”

The wind came to an abrupt halt, dropping its cargo on the ground. In the kitchen the tea kettle released the sound of an anguished scream, the way that Tori could not. The officer’s face blurred in her vision because of her tears before her sobs matured into wails of heartbreak.

* * *

It was a robot that extinguished all the lights in Sharon’s house and locked the door behind itself. Even the dog who was usually so excited at being outside that he’d run everywhere at full tilt, walked slowly with his mistress to her car.

Max rested his chin on her knee as Tori drove home. She didn’t even sense him staring up at her with sad brown eyes. Nor did she notice a dim light burning when she pulled into her driveway. A light she had not left on when she ran from the building in a fear she no longer felt. This emptiness, this blank canvas, this nothingness where you go when all hope is gone.

She held the door open for the dog then walked in behind him. Once again, she almost ran into his solid little body parked in her way. She frowned as she glared at him until she noticed he was staring with great concentration at the other side of the room.

It seemed to take an hour for her to turn her head so that she was facing the far wall. When her eyes reached the same sight Max was seeing, Tori’s knees turned to water. Just like that, she was brought back to reality when a needle of terror pierced her brain.

Her throat spasmed in fear and her stomach twisted into a knot of terror. Despite the chill in the air, she began to sweat. Clinching her teeth, she willed her body to move one foot backward. She tried to scream but could only force out a pitiful mewling, like an injured cat. An involuntary shudder passed through her.

Is this some sort of grief-induced hallucination or dementia?

Wisps of mist sailed across the floor punctuated by a soft glow that pulsed in counterpoint to her terrified heartbeat. Was it something too horrible to truly contemplate? Again, she told her limbs to move and again they refused. Then she heard him. The hair on the back of her neck rose in a fear as cold and deep as the Arctic Ocean. She knew within the space of a heartbeat that she was not alone. She saw the shape sharpen and take a more distinct form of a tall, dark man, and he stepped out of the mist, toward her. There was a sense of anticipation, an urgent expectancy of something or
someone
, wishing for her in her darkest hour.

Tori stared at him, compelled to watch him, as unable to look away as changing the ebb and flow of the tides. Even though her mind processed the image, informed her she was correct in what she was seeing, her heart stuttered, skipping several beats, threatening to stop if the man advanced closer to her.

Her gaze began at the top of his head, to his hair that brushed against the raised collar of his shirt, to the ice-blue eyes, down his patrician nose to his sculptured lips, parting into a smile that showcased his brilliant teeth. Downward to the wide shoulders, narrow hips and
O God, don’t let your eyes linger there!
to his muscled thighs, to the stockings covering his perfectly formed muscled calves, ending at the buckled shoes on his feet.

He was more handsome than even her imagination could have designed. His jet black hair shined blue in the light of the lamp and the compassion in his eyes did not detract from their beauty. He held his strong arms out to her, beseeching her to walk into his embrace.

Am I no longer able to separate reality from fantasy?

True, he seemed to lack the substance of a real, flesh and blood man. In the briefest flicker, he faded. She wished she’d at least seen a serpentine of smoke, as she imagined a ghost would appear, instead of “it” just simply vanishing like that. First it was there, the next it was gone. It didn’t fade or walk through a wall—it was just GONE.

Certain she had misinterpreted her own eyesight, she stepped backward, closer to the door. Then she realized the form, or whatever it was, hadn’t completely left.

What is this? Is this some sort of illusion lurking within a reality?

Just as placing an undeveloped photo into a pan of developer brings forth a picture, the man’s image became more solid, more detailed. It was as if someone had dialed up a rheostat and the apparition began to form into the shape of a man. He slowly, surely, without question, materialized into…

It’s his eyes. That’s how I know. That’s why I’m certain. But ohmygod, this isn’t possible. It’s insane! But those eyes, and the expression that I have mentally visualized thousands of times tells me that this is truly, inexplicably, undeniably HIM.

As she realized she could no longer see the wall behind him, Tori began to become light-headed.

He was luminous and she felt compelled to stare at him. His returning expression one of… love? His eyes held her hostage.

What’s next? Do I start believing in vampires and werewolves? Anything that goes bump in the night?

She had envisioned his eyes as the pure blue of the Arctic Ocean, but the sultriness there raised the temperature of the room.

He reached out his hand and the touch was so precise that it couldn’t be the wind, especially when no windows were open. Her astonishment and fear deepened into awe. Though still doubting her own sanity, her pulse settled into a fast rhythm and her head began to clear, but then he spoke.

“Victoria, my darling. Let me hold you and perhaps lighten the heavy burden upon your loving heart.”

She never heard or felt the soft thud as her body hit the carpet.

Chapter Seventeen

She didn’t immediately open her eyes when she awoke. Through the haze of the state between waking and sleeping, Tori had a nagging feeling that something was wrong, that something horrible had happened. Then it all came back to her in a flood of torment. She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as possible, trying to force the nightmare sights and sounds from her memory.

The blankets were smothering, but she couldn’t make herself pull them from her head. When she felt a weight settle onto the side of the bed and gentle hands tugging at the confining cover, she suddenly remembered another shocking event of last night.

Inch by miniscule inch, Tori began to pull her head free of its confines. When the blanket reached her eyebrows, she stared with large, rounded green eyes as she jerked the comforter off her head. She knew her hair was wild and her mouth hung open but she wasn’t cognizant to the point she could correct those problems.

It appeared that she’d lost the power of speech, also. It didn’t help that he sat there, that amazing smile lighting up his face. He leaned forward to cup her face in his hands. Tori jerked away so hard she slammed the back of her head against the headboard. At once she reclaimed the power of speech.

“Ouch! Man, that’s gonna leave a mark!”

“Good morning, Victoria.”

His voice not only sounded familiar, it felt so gloriously right saying her name.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

“Darling, you know who I am.”

“This is not possible. No way, no how, nun-uh.”

“Yes, my love, it is, indeed, possible. It must be for I am here, am I not?”

“You are what I’ve felt, the thing that Max stares at. Oh! The one that knocks my things to the floor!”

“I apologize for that, darling. I was only trying to garner your attention.”

“How did you get here? O God, I can’t believe I’m talking to you. You’re not real and I’m crazy.”

“You are not crazy and I am real. At least I think I’m real. It’s so difficult to know, really.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? How the hell can you not know whether or not you’re real?”

“Well Victoria, you must admit this is an unusual set of circumstances, true?”

“Well—yeah.”

“I can only tell you how I came to be, at least in my own opinion. You may, perhaps, help me to better understand how it… I, came to be, here and now.”

She had to get away, had to think, and she couldn’t do that with him so close.

“Wait, I have to go to the bathroom. You know how it is when you first wake up… or maybe you don’t.”

I don’t know because I have no idea how close to human you could possibly be.

She cast her eyes sideways at him, pulling free of the blankets, tugging at her t-shirt, hotly aware of how her body reacted to the cold morning air in the bedroom. She crossed her arms across her chest and turned to slip past him. Her feet brushed against the side of his leg and she felt his calf muscle tense as her foot grazed him.