Through Shade And Shadow

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

"It is now being reported that this man, this serial killer, is in fact a Shade, Alec." Mason Jerah turned from his grandmother's bedside, lifting the television remote to increase the volume.  "For those of you just joining us, we are covering the recent arrest of late night DJ, William Darchel, from Salt Lake City, Utah, for the murder of as many as 25 women over the last ten years. Darchel was found drinking the blood of his latest victim, Marisel Deboi."

Mason watched as video played of the arrest, with Darchel being led out of a house with blood on his face and painting his shirt. "Until very recently, Shades were believed to be nothing more than folklore, brought over with immigrants from places in Europe."

"I told you they'd find us."

Mason turned back to find his grandmother pushing herself up to lean back against the headboard.  "They didn't find us, Nana.  They caught a killer."

Her lined face clearly showed her disgust.  "It's always the worst of us that they find. Mark my words, Mason, this is not going to do us any favors.  Bad enough as it is."

He let her words go without protest.  It wouldn't do any good to argue.  She had lived a life he barely knew about, had seen things he never would.  She had earned the fear that had kept them separate, hiding from a world she knew would never understand or accept them.

"I'll bring you some tea."

"No, boy, help me up.  I'm tired of this bed."

He sighed, but pushed his chair back while she pulled the blankets off herself.  He offered his hand as she put her feet on the floor, letting her use it to steady herself and pull herself upright.  Once she was steady, he let her set the pace, taking them out of her small bedroom and into a spacious kitchen.

His father had grown up in this house, and his Nana had helped build it when she was in her teens.  Mason had spent a lot of time in the house as a boy, and since the fire that had destroyed his own house and killed his father, he too had considered this place home.

"I'll make some tea." Mason said as they reached the kitchen. 

"That's my good boy."  She patted his arm and shuffled into the living room.  He heard the television come on and sighed.  The more she saw of the world outside, the more she was afraid.

Not that he could blame her. 

They were the last of their line.  He was a few weeks shy of eighteen and he had never met another Shade who wasn't family.

Mason set the kettle on the stove and set up the tray for his Nana's tea. He'd always thought they were the last, until they had received a letter from a Shade on the east coast, the daughter of one of his Nana's friends.

If it was true that Darchel was a Shade, things would change for any living Shade.  They had always been a thing of myth and legend, stories told around campfires and written about in books with other fantastical creatures like dragons and unicorns and witches.

Darchel had been found three days before in a house in Utah with blacked out windows and bodies of missing women, all hung upside down and bled dry.

Clearly the man was deranged.

Mason filled the teapot from the kettle and set the tea steeping before putting a couple of cookies on the tray as well.  He headed into the darkened living room.

"Of course, liberal media is going to say there is no such thing as Shades," a man on the television was saying as Mason set the tray down. "They will try to tell us that this man has some sort of disease, that he should be pitied. I'm here to tell you that William Darchel is the son of the devil himself. How else do you explain him?"

Mason poured tea and handed the cup to his Nana, sitting beside her on the couch.  "Do you think he really is one of us, Nana?" Mason asked.

"I think he might be. Look how pale he is.  Never seen a sunny afternoon, that one."

Mason watched the footage again as they replayed it, Darchel being dragged out of the house by two men, his face a mask of rage and blood.  He flinched as the sun found his skin, pulling back instinctively, only to be dragged forward again.

”We are joined now by Utah senator Norman Douglas. Senator, thank you for being here." Mason didn't recognize the man in the dark suit, but one look told him the man was a politician.  His thick brown hair was sprinkled with gray and styled in a typical rich man’s haircut. His gray eyes belied the serious set of the man's face.  Something made him happy, probably the free publicity.

"Thank you, Alec, I'm glad I could be here. Let me tell you something. This is not something we could have predicted, but rest assured that we are prepared to do whatever it takes to keep the people safe.”

"What an ass." Mason glanced at his grandmother, smirking at her use of the pejorative.  "That man…"  She shook her head, never finishing the thought. 

They sat in silence for a while, watching as the news cycled through to other stories and came back to Darchel. It was all of his Nana's worst fears come to life. 

Her fear had kept him isolated.  All he knew of his heritage as a Shade he had learned from her, and most of what she taught him had been to teach him how to hide what he was from the world.

There was a lot more to who and what they were, he knew that.  He knew how to find clean water and to avoid salt and sunlight.  He knew how to use the energy within him to ease aches and pains.  But he also knew from the memories inside him that there was a lot he didn’t know.

The fullness of those memories wouldn't unlock until he turned eighteen.  They were his mother's, hers and her line's, taken with her last breath when he was only nine and locked away by his father until Mason was of age, when presumably he would have learned enough to understand them. His education in his heritage ended two years after that, however, when his father was killed in the fire.  His grandmother had forbidden him to use his gifts outside of the house, refused to teach him how to use the healing energy inside him to affect others.

She was terrified they'd be found and killed.  Or worse.  Listening to some of the people on the television now, he couldn't say her fears were unfounded.

***

His birthday was a somber event, there was no cake, no presents.  He sat beside his Nana in the shadows of her bedroom, holding her hand as if his grip could hold her in her body.

"There was a time, Mason, when we did not have to hide what we are. We were sought for the gifts we can give, and not feared for them." She coughed weakly.  "But those times have long past, and you need to be safe. You need to protect yourself from them that would use a Shade to evil ends."

"I know Nana," Mason said softly, blinking away the tears. She had told him the same thing over and over for most of his life.

There had been a great uproar about Shades since Darchel's arrest.  Old myths were pulled out and then debated on every news channel, along with talk of medical research.  People were scared.  Darchel had people believing the old stories about Shades drinking blood to survive.

It wasn’t true. Shades could survive on blood, but it wasn’t a first choice.  Like anyone else, they required nutrition, food.  But a Shade’s physiology required liquid and lots of it. Preferably good, clean water.

"If they know what you are, they'll kill you.  And if they don't kill you outright, they will torture you, make you do things, make you a monster." Her old, wrinkled hand lifted, one bony, arthritic finger poking into his chest. "You hold on to the heart the gods gave you, boy. I won't be there to remind you." She took his hand again, squeezing it tightly. "You take what I'm giving you."

He shook his head. "No, Nana. Not yet." He wasn't ready to let her go, and he certainly wasn't ready for what she was giving him.  He was too young, too inexperienced.

"Yes, now, before it's too late." She pulled him closer with a surprising strength for one about to die. "Close your eyes, open your mouth. Take the strength of our line. You're the last of a lineage, Mason."

Tears slipped past his eyelids as he closed them, opening his mouth and leaning over her. Her body vibrated and she breathed in deep, holding it for an impossibly long time before she grabbed the sides of his face and pressed her open mouth to his.

Mason pulled away involuntarily, but she held him, breathing out into his mouth while her voice filled his head. "Swallow it, Mason." It was too much, too hard, like a giant rock formed from her breath, getting bigger as he held it in his mouth. "You must."

He sucked in and forced himself to swallow and the rock moved into his throat, then slowly down, until he could feel the fingers of it stretching out, pulling itself into him, expanding as it filled him. She fell back to the bed, panting. "There's my good boy."

His throat burned and he reached for the water on the side table, swallowing rapidly as the lump melted into him. It was different from when it was his mother.  More, somehow. Images started leaking into him, memories from down their line, the heritage of his people, the root of their gift. 

They had been a proud clan once, and his Nana had always told him that once he was the last of the line, all the power, all of their history would be his to safeguard.

She was the keeper of their line, and that hard ball of power and memory would bloom and flare in him… It was the right of the leader of his line: the power to lead, the memory of the world from which they came, the parting gift of every Shade, every life collected.

It was meant for an elder, for someone trained, someone who knew what he was.

It was never meant for someone like him. "Nana?"

Her eyes were closing and he could feel the cold creeping into her. "You be a good boy, Mason," she whispered. "Make me proud."

He felt her letting go and clung to her a little harder. "Please don't leave me."

"I'll always be a part of you." He couldn't tell if that was her actually thinking in his head or the part of her that was inside the gift she'd given him. Her death rippled through him, activating parts of him that were meant to be dormant until he was old enough to handle them.

Mason stood, his stomach churning with grief, even as his body grew hotter. There was too much light in the room suddenly, the last rays of a late spring sun slanting through the closed slats on the wooden shades, and he ran, down the stairs into the basement, drowning himself in the dark, stripping down and immersing himself in the cool waters of the soaking pool.

The water welcomed him, and he sank deep into it, clinging to the feeling of her until it slipped away and he was alone.  He surfaced slowly, as his body shifted inside, as it accepted those that had come before, the memory rippling through him of times past, of ancestors tormented, chased into hiding.

Some of it he knew from the stories his Nana would tell them, some he had guessed at from her silences.  His line was long, stretching all the way back to the days when Shades were the healers and shamans, before the coming of the Church had bred fear. There was too much to follow coherently. It exploded in small bursts of information, memories.  It prodded at the barrier his father had put in his head to keep his mother's last breath safe, breaking it open and doubling the effect.

Mason inhaled and sank deep into the pool again, willing the water to ease the transition.  Knowledge came alive inside him and he tentatively stirred the water with his hands, letting energy stimulate the water, which in turn warmed against his skin. 

He would stay there, in that cool pool of water until it had unrolled inside him, until his brain had sorted it into some sense of order and his body had adjusted. Then he would see to his Nana's body, and decide what to do next.