“What are you doing here?” Derek growled.
“I felt it when you brought her into the clearing. I just had to come and see for myself that you found her. She’s, how shall I say?” The man paused, searching for the right words. “Highly anticipated.”
“What do you want?”
“Fortunately, I don’t have to explain myself to you, Derek. In fact, you should be glad that I gave you this assignment rather than keeping you…with me, where you have no choice but to learn all the gory details,” he sneered.
Derek’s chest was heaving and he looked positively livid. The veins in his neck stood out like they were about to burst and every muscle in his body looked taut with fury.
Then I noticed his hands. They were a bright glowing orange, like red-hot pokers, and they shook with his effort to restrain himself.
I stood perfectly still as the man approached me. By the time he was within about three feet of me, I could smell him. He didn’t really stink so much as he just had very distinctive odor, like sickness and death and dark things I didn’t want to know about were oozing from his pores.
“I knew she’d be beautiful, too,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper.
He didn’t stop walking until he stood only inches from me. Eyes the dull, flat black of coal met mine, unblinking, boring a cold path into my skull. He didn’t speak or move, just stood looking down into my face for several intense, breathless seconds.
The corners of his mouth twitched up into that dead smile. “Mmm, you feel just like her,” he said, closing his eyes in pleasure. When he opened them, they held an evil delight, as if he’d somehow sampled my soul and liked the way it tasted. “Only sweeter. Pure,” he declared, licking his lips.
Just as I was about to back away in disgust, he closed his eyes once more and his body began to shimmer. The trees behind him became visible, dancing delicately in the wavy air where his translucent body shook.
Suddenly I was paralyzed. I watched him take another step closer to me. I wanted desperately to back away, but I was unable to move. Wide-eyed and terrified, I held my breath when he took that final step toward me, the one that would bring his transparent body into contact with mine.
The air burned inside my lungs and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to know what was coming.
A low whisper sounded in my ears, the deep ahh of ecstasy. Then a cold tickling sensation erupted on every surface of my body all at once. It was like walking through a huge, icy spider web. Reflexively, I shivered. For a second I could taste the awful smell of him, as if he’d somehow invaded my mouth. And then it was gone.
I waited a few seconds before slowly opening my eyes to look around. The man was gone. And I was shaken, profoundly shaken.
I exhaled. Then, with my very next breath, asked the most obvious question. “Where did he go?”
Hesitantly, I tried my legs. They wobbled, but at least it appeared they were back under my control. I spun in a tight circle, looking for the man at the edge of the forest, in the shadows of the trees, in the open of the clearing, but he was nowhere.
Relief washed over me in an energy-sapping wave. I turned to face Derek. He was looking at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that? Where did he go?”
“You could see him?”
“Of course I could see him. Why wouldn’t I?”
A deep frown creased Derek’s brow. “You shouldn’t have been able to see him,” he said, his voice quiet, apprehensive, causing needles of foreboding to prick their way down my spine.
“That’s ridiculous. Why shouldn’t I have been able to see him?”
“Because he’s dead.”
“Dead? What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. He’s dead.”
“Then how could you see him?”
“I’ve...seen him before. I know him, sort of.”
“So what does that mean, then, that I could see him?”
Derek stared at me for several long seconds, his expression a mixture of puzzlement and concern. When he finally spoke, the razor-sharp edge of his words cut right through me. “The only thing it can mean. It means you’re dead, too.”
CHAPTER TEN
My heart stopped for an instant before restarting at a faster pace. “What? That’s crazy,” I scoffed, looking anywhere but at Derek’s face. “Now that really is ridiculous,” I mumbled. When he made no comment, didn’t so much as move a muscle, I looked back at him. His face was so serious, so grave, I felt the burn of the bitter truth in my heart. Willfully, I swallowed back tears. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know, but there are only two ways people can see the dead and, as far as I know, you haven’t been over there.”
“Over where?”
“To the Darkness.”
“The Darkness?” This evening was beginning to take on a surreal quality, just as the previous night had. It was like I was in an extended opening scene of a cheesy sci-fi movie.
“Yes. It’s where you’ll go to fight. And win, preferably.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Fight?
Despite my determination not to cry, I felt my chin quiver. “Fight? What are you talking about?” Derek said nothing, didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken. He just continued to stare at me as if I was the enemy. And that sparked my anger. “Answer me! What are you talking about?”
Derek whirled away from me, suddenly furious. It lashed out at me like a physical entity, like a slap in the face. “I don’t know,” he spat, flinging his arms emphatically. “None of this,” he spun around, indicating the clearing, the power, the situation. “None of it may apply to you. I don’t know why he’d want you.” He stopped abruptly and stared into my face, as if struck by a realization. “Something’s wrong,” he said, taking two large steps away from me. “Very, very wrong.”
Bending, Derek angrily swiped his jacket off the ground then, without a backward glance, he strode past me. He stalked across the clearing then disappeared into the forest.
As I watched him go, I clung desperately to the denial that had served me so well recently. His footsteps faded into the distance and the events of the past few days crowded in on me, drowning out all that was recognizable about my life. The warmth and comfort of the familiar was all but gone, replaced by the cold reality of a strange world and an outlandish existence where my body and my life were not my own.