Sharp Like Shadow: Book 1 of A Wrath Unseen

Chapter 4

Alice ran as fast as she could and the shadow chased her.

Blood fell from her shredded arms like bits of crimson starlight scattering in the grass. Her every labored breath fled from her lungs in terror, abandoning her to disappear into the dark of the night. Clearly this couldn't be happening.

This had to be just another vision.

But she knew it wasn't.

Her death-visions were very different. For one thing, none of them had ever tried to kill her. And the monsters she saw were always attached to a person. They were terrifying, but they always lacked the physical threat to put her in any real danger. The death-visions would appear and scare her brainless, then fade away again as if they'd never been there at all, leaving her to question her own sanity. Often as a child she'd been able to convince herself that they weren't real.

But the shadow thing behind her was real. She had felt its claws on her, felt them bite into her skin like razors, and they were as real as Alice herself. She knew she had to keep running, or this thing that had stepped out of her most horrifying visions and into the reality of her world would tear the flesh from her body and scatter her remains across the neighborhood park.

Alice tore across the park, her feet flying with the speed of fear. She headed for the row of houses on the other side of the street, praying she would find help there. Halfway across the grassy space she began to hope she might make it. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder. Nothing. The shadow monster wasn't there. She barely had time to register the thought before her foot caught on an unseen rut and she went down, sprawling face first in the cool grass. She broke her fall on her injured forearms, wincing at the sharp sting of pain, then spun around to face the danger she knew was back there. Her lungs panicked, forcing rabid breaths through her open mouth, and she felt her heart pound like a frightened beast, threatening to tear its way through her shirt. Alice still couldn't see the shadow thing, but she had no doubt that it was there, hiding somewhere in the sea of late-night darkness.

As if to confirm her suspicion, one pool of shadow a few feet to her right began to move. The monster rose from the ground as before, flowing into the space above the grass in liquid silence. Its twisted arms reached for Alice and she had no more time to run, no strength left to fight. She closed her eyes as the terror clutching her heart hardened its grip, waiting for the death that had found her to drag her into the final dark.

"Hey shit head!"

The voice that echoed across the park brimmed with confidence and authority, and held the keen edge of anger, like an executioner's axe ready to dole out justice and strike head from body.

Alice turned toward the voice and as she did she saw the shadow monster turn as well, its movements somehow betraying the same surprise that Alice felt.

A few yards away, stood a tall, broad-shouldered young man whose presence lit up the deep shadow of the park like a spotlight. Both of his hands glowed, surrounded in brilliant orbs of blue-white energy, each with writhing tendrils of electricity whipping the air around them like living creatures and tracing angry lines up the boy's bare arms. His Van Halen t-shirt and loose acid-wash jeans rippled in the current of a breeze that wasn't there, and the midnight-black hair that would have hung in his eyes did the same, moving at random in a violent dance above his head. Alice saw the young man's face clearly, his pale skin, strong jaw, and slightly rounded cheeks illuminated by the glow of his eyes as they burned into the night like tiny globes of blue-white fire.

"Time to leave the girl alone," the boy said.

The young man thrust both arms in front of him. His hands flared in a blinding flash, and a seething beam of light burned through the night, hammering into the shadow creature and driving it away from Alice. She felt a tingling heat on her face, and a strange warmth rose in her chest as if in response to whatever power the boy had used. The monster shrieked its pain and rage, a sound like nails dragged across a pane of glass. It tumbled along the grass as bits of its shadowy form shredded and burned away at the touch of this young man's light. The creature cast a final glance at Alice, its eyes flaring red daggers in the dark, then dove to the ground, losing substance and disappearing into the night as if it was never there.