Sharp Like Shadow: Book 1 of A Wrath Unseen

Chapter 11

This time when Alice woke something was different.
She cracked her eyes open in slow blinks, taking the measure of her surroundings. She was still in the middle of the large warehouse space, tied to the same chair, but something had changed. A weight pressed into her back that hadn't been there before. She moved a little, testing her bonds, searching for any give in the duct tape that held her at the wrists and ankles. No good. She was still trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. As she squirmed in her seat, the object pushing into her back moved as well. Then it groaned a little.
"Alice?" whispered the shape behind her. "Is that you?"
Royce!
Alice's heart leaped into her throat and tears into her eyes as relief washed over her at the sound of her brother's voice.
"Royce! My God! Oh thank God! Are you OK? Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm OK. Just a little scraped up is all, but I'll be fine."
Royce's voice grated out, rough and cracking, like the morning after screaming your head off at a concert.
"That thing wanted to know where you were," he said. "But I didn't tell him nothing."
The weight of his back pressing into Alice lessened as Royce sagged in his chair.
"Guess he found you anyway, though."
Something was different in his tone. It sounded too mature; too weary. Over the past several hours he'd been exposed to horrors that shouldn't exist, and it had changed him. Alice was sure he would never be the same after this. Neither of them would.
"It's OK," Alice said. "You did real good. Now we just gotta find a way out of here."
"I don't know," Royce said. "I been trying to get loose for hours. Maybe Grandma called the police or something. Oh shit, Grandma! Is she OK? Did you see her?"
"Yeah, Grandma's OK." Alice didn't want to tell Royce about their grandmother's apparent catatonic state. He had enough to worry about. "She's next-door with Mrs. Johnson."
"Well, maybe she's got help on the way then. Maybe someone's coming to find us."
Alice thought about the last time she saw Miriam, lying bloody and unconscious in a pile of cinderblock and drywall rubble. The mysterious girl had put up a good fight with her crazy light powers. But the monster inside the high school principal had messed her up real good.
"I don't think anyone's coming, little bro."
Royce sagged even further, his weight lessening against Alice's back. He sighed, and it sounded like defeat.
"Hey," Alice said, "don't give up on me, now. We're gonna get through this. We'll figure it out together." Alice tried to sound calm and confident like Grandma would have, but the words came out hollow and lifeless, spiraling down to die on the concrete at her feet.
"Why is this thing after you, Alice?" Royce said. "What the hell does he want?"
Alice wasn't sure how much to tell him. Her brother knew nothing about her death-visions. He'd been too little to remember much about her screams, and their mother's concern, and the doctor visits, and the long list of shrinks. She'd never told him about any of it. All he knew was that she saw a therapist on occasion and it wasn't something she liked talking about. Now that he'd been dropped into her world against his will and dragged through the mud beside her, Alice figure she owed him some kind of explanation. But after so many years of avoiding the subject, the words were difficult to find.
"At first he just came after me cause I can see him." She forced the words out in a trembling breath.
"See him?" Royce said. "What you mean?"
"It was a shadow, right? The monster. When you saw it, it looked like a huge shadow?"
"Yeah. It came up through the living room carpet." She felt him shift in his bonds, shaking at the memory. "At first I thought I was hallucinating. Or dreaming, or something. It just couldn't be real, right? This living shadow thing tearing right through the floor. But hallucinations can't smash furniture or slice holes in things."
"Must have been crazy," Alice said. "I'm sorry I wasn't there."
"S'cool," Royce said. "I came up to check on you, but you were gone. I figured you'd split after that weird dude came looking for you."
"That weird dude was that shadow thing, bro," she said. "It can take over people's bodies. It kills people and sort of becomes them. So, no one knows who it is or what it looks like. Except me."
"That's freaking crazy." Royce shook his head. "How come you can see it?"
"I don't know," she said. "It's just this thing I've always had. I see things in people. Bad things. Terrible things. I always thought it was just me, that there was something wrong with me, but now I'm not sure. Maybe all that bad stuff I've seen was real. Like the shadow thing. I don't know—"
Alice ran out of words.
"I can't believe this is happening," Royce said.
He sighed again but sat up a little straighter.
"I'm sorry you had to go through all that, sis." His voice was soft, like the voice he'd always used with Grandma when he helped take care of her. "It must have been scary. Especially after Mom was gone."
"Yeah," she said, "but I had you and Grandma."
"So, now that the shadow thing got you, what's he going to do with us?"
"I don't know. He changed his mind. He doesn't just want me, now. He wants me to tell him how to find my friends."
"What friends?" Royce asked. "You mean like friends from school?"
"No," Alice started pulling at her bonds again, working to loosen them and hoping to get an arm free. "They're new friends."
"What new friends, Alice? What are you talking about?"
"When the shadow thing came to get me, some people helped me get away," she said. "Some people with, ah... special abilities."
"Like your vision thing?"
"Kind of, but different. More powerful."
"Then, why don't you just tell the creep what he wants to know, Alice?" Royce said, frustration edging into his voice. "Let your friends worry about it if they're so powerful."
"I can't do that, bro. I can't just send that monster after them and hope for the best. They're powerful, yes, but their just people. I can't be responsible for their death."
"What about our death?"
"Royce, come on. I don't want to die either, but these people are maybe the only ones who can stop the shadow monster from killing anyone else. We have to let them try, or we could have a lot more blood on our hands."
Royce was quiet.
Alice hated that her brother was in danger. She hated to ask any more from him. It wasn't fair that he was even here in the first place. This was not his fight. It wasn't her's either, but at least there was a reason behind her involvement. Her death-visions had always been her curse, and now they were probably going to be the death of her. But Royce had been dragged into this for no reason other than to get to Alice. She would have left him out of this if she could, but now that he was in it, they would have to see it through together.
Moments ticked by and Alice wondered if she might be losing her brother to the fear and desperation of their situation.
"Ok." Royce cut into the silence. "Ok, we won't tell him anything."
"Thank you," Alice sighed.
"Yeah, don't thank me yet. I still might tell Grandma on you for climbing out on the roof again. You know she hates that."
Alice snorted, somehow smiling through the terror as a warmth spread through her chest. As much as she wished Royce was somewhere safe, she was also glad they were together. Breathe. We have each other. She drew strength from that closeness and set her mind to the task of staying alive. She wouldn't betray her new friends, but she wasn't going to just sit here either, waiting for the most convenient time to become an evening snack for the Vetala.
Alice flexed her arms back and forth, in and out, working to loosen the duct tape enough to slip a hand free and escape.