The Elementals : The Dawn of Darkness

Chapter 35 - Shadow's Confession

The atmosphere in the car was...tense, to say the least.

Getting away from the facility had been the easy part. I think it had something to do with the sudden, frantic departure of two of Molly's inner circle, which had successfully worked everyone into a panic. Amid the chaos, slipping out of the grounds and back to the Land Rover (which thankfully remained undiscovered) had been unusually simple. This worked particularly well in our favour considering one of us was nearly in the buff.

With me flooring it and further destroying the Land Rover's suspension, it only took around ten minutes to re-join the winding B roads back to civilisation. This was a blessed relief as it meant no one had to say anything. Not a single word of spoken English was uttered by anyone during this time. Not by me, not by Sheria, and most certainly not by the guy who was picking slivers of cooled metal out of his flesh with a pair of forceps he'd dug out the boot. Shadow barely winced as skin and muscle was rasped away and were healed instantly by whatever not-so-secret power he had.

I glanced momentarily over to Sheira in the passenger seat. Her furrowed eyes were fixed on Shadow, her mouth was bent into a slight frown, and she was tapping a random rhythm onto the armrest, lost in thought. I could practically see her mind ticking away to come up with an answer to the obvious question.

The obvious question and the obvious answer that now seemed so startlingly obvious, I was kicking myself as to how I hadn't seen it before. Now I fully admit that I don't know much about guns, but I know for a fact that you're not supposed to survive a shot to the face at point-blank range. But there Shadow was. Alive. And breathing.

The man had just spat in the face of death, and yet it didn't seem to faze him. To me, at least, he was acting like surviving something like that was, well...normal. Perhaps to him, it was. Maybe, and now this seemed very likely, he'd done it before.

It was the impossible man himself who broke the silence. "Pull over," he said as we trundled into a small village on the outskirts of Edinburgh. He made me jump with the sudden sound, but I did what I was told and turned into a side street that led to a small railway station.

It wasn't anything special. Just a single line of tracks and a lone plastic shelter with a hole punched in the roof. Empty take away boxes and aluminium cans rolled across the concrete, carried along by the gentle breeze. There were two cars parked a little further down the way, and, huddled together like sleeping robots, stood four of those giant steel bins; one for glass, one for metal, one for paper and one for clothes for charity.

The back door popped open, Shadow hopped out and made straight for the clothes bin. I was just turning the ignition off as the rusted, graffitied wall melted into shadows and our friend walked right into the container. I considered the legality of this for a moment. Was it stealing? Technically yes. But it was for the needy, so maybe that bent the rules a little.

Yeah, that'll hold up great in court.

He wasn't in there for long, just long enough for Sheira and I to disembark, share a funny look about our companion, and look back to the container. His torn jeans had been replaced by a dark blue pair, and his t-shirt was now a faded red one. His jacket and boots had been undamaged by the whole affair of the dunking, which was probably down to some hidden repair sigil stitched onto the label. I could probably do with some of those on my better jeans, but I digress.

With a new set of threads and only a few suspicious stains leaked into the fabric, Shadow leant casually against the container but couldn't manage to look us in the eye. His shoulders were tense, and his arms crossed protectively in front of his chest, head down to study the patterns his shoes were carving into the loose gravel. Dad had done something similar when he was nervous and feeling vulnerable, like when he had been waiting for Mum to get out of the hospital after the twins. He knew she was safe, even after the cesarian and complications, but he'd been like a live wire for a week.