Walking Shadow (The Darkworld Series Book 2) (22 page)

There was. Me. The doppelganger looked like me. Mr Melmoth had been chasing her when he’d died. And that Skele-Ghoul had spoken to me, too…

Something big was happening right under our feet, I knew that much. But how it involved me, I didn’t know.

“Well, whoever it is, they made one mistake,” said Howard. “They tried to pick a fight with us.”

“Howard, I told you, we’re not fighting―”

“I’m sick of sitting around letting those
venators
have all the fun,” snarled Howard. “Someone set those creatures loose on
our
campus! We have to show them they can’t get away with it.”

“We already burnt them to cinders, what more do you want?” said Claudia.

“That’s probably majorly disrespecting the dead, too,” said Cyrus.

“What, you think we should have reburied them?” said Claudia, with a snort.

“I wonder where they came from,” said Cyrus. “Wait a minute―you don’t think―”

He began to rummage through his bag.

“What is it, Cy?” said Leo.

He pulled out a newspaper and unfolded it. I recognised it as the local paper.

“Picked this up today. Forgot to have a look. If there’s anything in here about grave-robberies…”

“Ah, that’s a point,” said Claudia. “Those skeletons must have come from somewhere nearby.”

“Well, they weren’t from Blackstone,” said Cyrus. “The only cemetery’s the old one in the churchyard, and that’s right next to the Venantium’s headquarters. The next nearest is in Hawthorn, the other village down the road.”

“That doesn’t explain why someone was able to summon a demon under the Venantium’s radar.”

“Maybe they didn’t. I think they summoned the creatures outside. How they managed to walk past the barriers around Blackstone is a mystery―maybe because they’re dead? But I don’t think even a traitor
venator
could summon anything here. Too many defensive mechanisms.”

“So someone let them into Blackstone?” said Berenice.

“Looks that way.”

“Told you there was a traitor.” And she looked at me.

I glared back.
She’s determined to suspect me.

“Nothing about local grave-robberies in here,” said Cyrus, throwing down the paper. “Except in the readers’ letters section. Hysterical letters from locals about seeing zombies on the streets. I wonder…”

“They probably walked out on the night of the Zombie Bar Crawl,” said Leo, absently. He stared at one page of the journal, frowning.

“Well, it sounds a bit too much like those Skele-Ghouls. If they’re walking the streets right under the Venantium’s noses, we should be worried.”

“Like I said,” said Howard, sending Cyrus’s character flying across the screen with a tremendous sucker-punch to the face, “We should deal with this ourselves.”

Cyrus sighed. “First we need to figure out what’s going on.”

“Maybe the shape-shifter’s the Skele-Ghouls’ leader,” said Howard.

“The Skele-Ghouls weren’t here before, though,” said Claudia. “Someone from the Venantium would have spotted them. I mean, I can understand how they could miss a shadow-creature if it was really a shape-shifter, but walking skeletons are pretty noticeable. And the harpies see everything.”

“The one they killed won’t,” said Leo. “Come to think of it―it’s weird that there was only one harpy, and it apparently took them on alone. They tend to have this swarm instinct. But there was just one corpse.”

“Good point,” said Cyrus. “Maybe it got too close. But if you kill a harpy with magic, it just disappears back to the Darkworld. That one was torn to pieces. Maybe there
was
a swarm, and they only
killed
one of them to leave a message for the Venantium.”

“Which brings us back to where we started,” said Claudia. “Well, I’m all for taking on a bunch of weak-ass skeletons, even if they have a creepy shape-shifting child leading them. But I dunno… something just doesn’t add up. Someone let them past the Barrier.”

“We need to leave it to the Venantium for now,” said Cyrus. “They’re more than capable of taking down ghouls. I’d say this is part of something bigger. And Leo,” he said, with a stern glance at his brother, “Don’t do anything rash. That goes for you too, Howard.”

“Wasn’t planning to,” said Howard, pummelling Cyrus’s character on-screen. The figure flew through the air and disappeared out of sight, over a cliff’s edge. “I win,” he added.

Cyrus sighed.

“Wait,” said Leo. “I’ve an idea. Vampires and demons have the same ability; they can take energy from others. So vampires naturally have less magical energy than a normal sorcerer, even though they can use magic the same way. But of course, demons don’t
need
to take energy from people―they just do it, it’s instinct. They can draw on magic even from the dead. So… maybe the person responsible is trying to figure out a way to do what vampires and demons do naturally―take magical energy from others. Humans can’t do it, after all. It’s kind of a sketchy theory, I admit, but it’s all I’ve got.”

“You might have something there,” said Cyrus, thoughtfully. “People don’t think about this a lot, but summoning a demon―well, the energy has to come from somewhere. That’s why you need a demon heart, a stone loaded with magical energy. Sorcerers started using them because otherwise the demons would make for the next available source of energy. In other words, the summoner. They still do, a lot of the time. That’s why summoning one is such a stupid, risky thing to do.”

I nodded. I remembered Terrence all-too-clearly. The demon had had a heart, an anchor, and had still killed Terrence. I resisted the urge to run my hand over my own demon heart, wondering for the first time where the energy inside had come from. I knew nothing about how one went about amassing magical energy, but it wasn’t like I intended to summon a demon any time soon.

Would the fortune-teller know?
Why
had she disappeared now of all times?

Another, chilling thought struck me.
Can
I
take magical energy from others?
Was that what my reflection in the dream had meant when she’d said I was
one of them?

You don’t even have a heart. You can’t love. You cannot be loved.

I shook my head fiercely.
No…

“What’s up, Ash?” said Leo, looking at me with concerned eyes. “You think of something else?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I can’t think of anything else.”

Liar,
said a voice in my head. How much longer could I keep this from them? Did I really belong amongst other magic-users? Did I belong to the demons instead?

I
am
you, Ashlyn. You are a part of us now.

The words repeated in my head as I left the Games Room, making the excuse that I needed to study. Leo asked again if I was okay. I said I was. What more could I say? That I was losing my mind? I couldn’t mention the dreams without giving away my secret. I
needed
to talk to the fortune-teller.

I went downstairs into the common room. No one even noticed the Games Room, because during meetings Cyrus used some Influence on it to make it invisible to anyone but us.
I need to ask him how he does that,
I thought.

My mind kept jumping around from one thing to another. Seeing a girl about my height with brown hair at the union bar made my heart jump and my hand fly to the pendant around my neck, before she turned slightly and I realised it was someone from my seminar group.
Idiot.

I hurried out of the common room and into torrential rain. Pulling up my hood, I jogged through the student village back to my flat, feet splashing in puddles. The grey sky made the forest look dark, uninviting.

I let myself into the building, shaking rainwater from my hair, and crossed the corridor to my flat. It was early evening, but it disarmed me how quiet it was. Probably people were hiding from the rain.

I unlocked the door, trying to suppress my sense of disquiet. A relaxing movie night with my flatmates―that was what I needed to take my mind off things.

Stepping into the corridor, I collided with a hooded figure. I jumped aside with a shriek, reaching out to the Darkworld. Ice sprang up along my hands, even as panic ripped through me.
Shit. How did it get in? My friends…

Muffled giggles reached my ears. I frowned, glancing at Sarah’s door, then back at the hooded figure. A tall, cloaked, masked man, holding… a scythe?

Sarah’s door burst open, and Alex and Sarah came out, roaring with laughter. Alex waved a camera in my face. “Oh-my-God,” she spluttered. “That was amazing. You’re a world-class actress, Ash. Thanks for standing right in front of the door!”

“Wha―?”

“Whoever put spy-holes in the doors is a genius.”

“I am going to kill you,” I said.

The hooded man unmasked, revealing a tall Indian boy. He grinned at me. “That’s not much of a welcome, is it?”

This was too much. “What the hell is going on?” I demanded.

“Hey, now.” Alex held up her hands. “While you were off shooting zombies or whatever you GameSoc people do, Mandeep here moved in. It just so happened we were formulating an evil plan at the time… and he offered to star in my horror-movie remake.”

“What, you made him dress up as the Grim Reaper?” I said. “Couldn’t you have asked Pete to do it?”

“Pete’s passed out in the kitchen with lipstick all over his face.”

“Ri-ight,” I said, deciding I didn’t want to know. “It’s nice to meet you, by the way,” I added to Mandeep. “Sorry about those two.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” he said, putting down the scythe. “They said you could take a joke. Your friends are too short to look intimidating in a Grim Reaper costume.”

“Ha!” I said, as Alex made a noise of protest. “Give me that camera.”

“No way. I’m putting this on Facebook.”

“Like hell you are!” I attempted to wrestle the camera from her, whilst Mandeep and Sarah looked on, laughing.

I hoped my contacting the Darkworld hadn’t been visible on camera. That would be a sure-fire way to get locked up by the Venantium.

Giving up, I sat down on the hall floor. “Glad you got a laugh out of scaring me half to death.”

“Best. Scream. Ever,” said Alex. “Oh God―seriously, Ash, you stole the show.”

“I expect a cut of the profits,” Mandeep said. “I stood here for half an hour!”

“Well, we didn’t know
exactly
when Ash would come back…”

I shook my head. Really, with friends like mine, it wasn’t surprising I was jumping at shadows. I’d never hear the end of this one.

Thankfully, the footage only showed the front half of me before I jumped out of the camera’s sight. Not that I was thrilled at my humiliation being plastered all over social media, but at least I hadn’t exposed my magic to the world. I couldn’t do to my friends what I’d had to do to David, erasing and altering his memories to forget about seeing me use magic. And I couldn’t forget how Terrence had messed with
my
memory, erasing our first encounter, when he’d stolen the pendant from me.

“Ash.”
The fortune-teller’s voice spoke without warning, sharp and clear as though she was right in front of me. I froze where I stood. It
couldn’t
be―I’d just been thinking about subliminal magic…

“Don’t panic. I’m using mind-communication. I cannot speak to you right now, but it’s important that you come and find me later. All of you. I need to talk to your friends, too.”

Sure
, I thought, not knowing if she would hear me or not. I was sure we were somehow communicating through the Darkworld.

“Good. Make sure you come. It’s important.”

The connection to the Darkworld faded. My heart beat fast in my ears, and I steadied myself against the wall.

I had no idea what the fortune-teller wanted―but I was glad she was back.