The Shadow's Touch

  The Shadow ’ s Touch

  Ancient Enemy #2

  By

  R. Scott VanKirk

  Cover Art by Doug Shuler

  Edited by Jessica Knauss

  Errors and Omissions by R. Scott VanKirk

  Published by

  Quantum Duck Ink

  Centennial CO 80111

  ISBN: 978-1-49034-520-8

  Copyright 2012-2013

  Dedication

  To my Mother. Thanks for listening and not drowning me as a child.

  Special Thanks

  To Josh, Mike, and Gregg for feeding me.

  Special Note

  While I have taken every effort to write this book in grammatically correct English, if you find an error, please let me know at scott@scottvankirk.com so I can fix it for others. I welcome all comments and suggestions. You can visit me at my web-page to see what else I am up to at Http://www.scottvankirk.com

  Disclaimer

  No person, place, or thing you know, or think you know, is depicted in this book so you can't sue me.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  When Endings Are Beginnings

  Send More Nurses…

  Old Doc Anderson had a Farm…

  The Fruit of My Loins

  Footloose

  Good Friends

  Really Good Friends…

  The Rock Shop

  Break In

  Death in Ohio

  To the Loony Bin, and Beyond

  Still Life With Shadows

  Recruited

  AD—After Daniel

  What Dreams May Come

  The First to Fall

  Peel Away the Darkness

  I’ll Share Mine…

  Fear and Loathing at Shady Oaks

  Night Moves

  Dreams of Death and Walking

  Attack of the B-Movie Monster

  The Sins of the Fathers

  Home with the Family

  Snakeboy vs. The Tiny Green Hooter

  Sharing

  Stalker

  Wiped

  McFreaky

  Reaping What Was Sowed

  Whole Foods

  Training

  Bear Necessities

  Really Big Game Hunt

  Jailhouse Blues

  Life Goes On—For Some

  Experimental Error

  Home

  The First Hunt

  Death and Yearning at Frankies

  Shadows of Yesterday

  New and Improved

  Il Saia

  Missing Persons

  To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

  Jen

  Erik

  Dancing Fever

  Grave Robbery

  Afterward

  A Note From Me

  Excerpt From The Templar's Gift

  Surprise

  A Note from the Author

  Titles By R. Scott VanKirk

  When Endings Are Beginnings

  I contemplated my bloody shirt and the difference an hour and a foot could make.

  An hour transformed the vital fluid that sustained me into a sticky red cleaning problem. A foot to the left and I would have been the cleaning problem—for the people who loved me the most.

  An hour was also all it took for my elation from surviving my fight with Erik and kicking his butt to turn into morose introspection. In that same hour, the bullet hole in my arm transformed into a neat round scar. Super-healing was nifty as long as the first shot wasn’t fatal or the damage to the brain irreversible.

  Two more fried bologna and cheese sandwiches topped up my stomach, but not my mood.

  What do I do now, Spring? I asked my live-in tenant mentally.

  She replied the same way. As I have said, This One, hunt him down and kill him before he has the chance to come at you again.

  No, you know I wasn’t talking about him. He’s just a bully, everyone knows they’re cowards. We don’t need to worry about him anymore.

  You will bet your life on this idea? Spring’s skepticism doused my brain in dripping scorn. She wasn’t what you would call an easy going, live-and-let-live sort of gal. In fact, she wasn’t a gal at all. She was a dryad and she came down firmly in the red of tooth and claw camp. If Jen and Gregg hadn’t cut down her oak tree, I have no doubt she would have finished me off.

  And though it turns out that being loved to death isn’t as fun as it sounds, I would have let her do it.

  Life is survival and reproduction.

  If that’s the case, why would I have saved you?

  I’d asked her before, and the question still troubled her. I don’t know.

  It hadn’t quite sunk in by then, but the simple truth was that I was an idiot and had equated mind-blowing sex with love. I loved Spring. After I’d invited her in, it had been disconcerting to learn that her love for me was more akin to my love for fried bologna and cheese sandwiches, but somehow that hadn’t changed my feelings.

  You are my sun. My root. My rain. I will protect you. Now relax as I help your body heal.

  The bullet wound in my arm had already closed up. Now she was working on the muscle. I was too tired to stay amazed. Besides, I had other things to worry about.

  I’d fixed my dad from the worst of the damage, but Jen was still lost in her insanity. I was convinced I was responsible for that, and that I somehow could find a solution to her problems. If I couldn’t, I didn’t know how I could live with myself.

  I gave in to a wave of heaviness. I put my head down on the table and allowed the beat of the heart, my magic stick, to buoy me up. Its power supported Spring and offset the drag of my thoughts. I drifted away.

  My dreams, pulsing to the world-encompassing beat of the heart, swirled past my eyes. Ancient visions of giant animals fighting the monstrous Wendigota competed with the shaman’s dire warnings and Gregg’s threats.

  – “Wendigota’s black heart is the source of his power... a beacon whose shine draws many dark spirits”

  – “Burn it or bury it in concrete and toss it into the ocean or something!”

  – “There are darker powers than Wendigota who roam the world, and its heart cannot be allowed to fall into their hands.”

  – “If you don’t get rid of it, I will!”

  I flew awake when the door to the garage opened still clutching the focus of my dreams: my stick—”The Heart of Wendigota.” I’d recovered it from the monstrous skeleton lying at the bottom of a burial mound created to contain it a thousand years ago. Though its rhythmic beat pulsed through my body, it didn’t look like a heart, nor did it look like an honest-to-god magic artifact. More than anything, it resembled a twisted, gnarled and pitch-black piece of driftwood. It was shaped like a kinky, three-inch long spearhead—pointy on one end, flat-ish and wider on the other.

  When I heard my mom enter, I jumped up and made an effort to seem awake. “Hi, Mom! Did you kick some insurance scum booty?”

  “No, I got pulled out of my meeting early.”

  The pain in her voice set off my inner alarms. “Is it Dad? Did something happen to him?”

  She nodded. “He’s not doing so well.”

  “But he looked so good when we left yesterday!”

  “I know, but since then, he’s been going downhill.”

  “Shit! …uh, sorry, Mom, but darn it, I thought I had fixed him!”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her face. When she brought her hands down, she said, “I am too old and tired for this.”

  My heart broke for her. Here I was, sleeping, while she struggled to maintain some semblance of normalcy in life. I’d made the right decision not to tell her about Erik’s itchy trigger finger. “So, what’s happening with Dad? Did he drop into a com
a again?”

  “No, he’s still awake, but he’s weak and getting weaker. He can barely sit up in bed anymore.”

  “Do the doctors know what’s going on?”

  “No, but they did say he hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday and can’t sleep. He’s been awake ever since he… you… did... whatever you did yesterday.”

  Stricken, I wracked my brain for some way to help while my mom sat beside me with haunted eyes. She wasn’t seeing anything within the room, just whatever unpleasant images her thoughts presented. After sitting in silence for a long few seconds, she and I spoke at the same time.

  “Mom, Maybe I…”

  “Finn, do you think…?”

  We both stopped. I nodded for her to continue.

  “Do you think you can do it without hurting or killing yourself?” The worry that creased her brow shattered my heart all over again.

  “I don’t know. I think so: I did it before.”

  Mom grabbed her purse and keys. “Okay, let’s get going.”

  As I followed her out, Spring stirred from her silence. This One, I would urge you to let the Earth take back your parent. It seems something inside him broke, and you cannot fix him. It is impractical for you to keep giving him your strength, and it puts you at a disadvantage if you are attacked again.

  Not an option, Spring. I’ll do this every day for the next fifty years if I have to.

  Send More Nurses …

  We stepped out of the hospital elevator onto my dad's floor, and were greeted by a woman's scream.

  I broke into a run, and within a few steps, I could tell the screaming came from my dad’s room. I could only make out “Let go!” It was followed by a hollow whack! I didn’t have much time to process any of this as I raced into the room.

  Another sight burned itself in to my memory to stay with me forever. My dad was sitting up in bed, dressed in a bunny print nightie. His hands were wrapped around a nurse’s upper arm, and he had his face buried in it. The nurse had a clipboard in her free hand and whaled on my dad with it, screaming for him to let go. Whack! Whack!

  I ran in farther and gaped with growing horror as my dad growled and shook his head like a hyena working on a corpse. Blood dripped all around his mouth and on his hands. Red splatters colored the nurse’s white uniform and the bed sheets.

  My dad was eating the nurse.

  “Dad!”

  “Jack!” gasped my mom.

  “Stop it!” I cried.

  Whack went the clipboard. This time the nurse had gotten some power behind her blow and the clipboard broke over Dad’s head, stunning him enough for the nurse to retrieve her mangled arm and fall away from him.

  Dad shook his head to clear it while chewing on something too horrible to contemplate.

  He smiled, and said after a quick swallow, “Finn! It’s great to see you up!”

  I don’t know what I expected to hear from someone who had just taken a bite out of a nurse, but that certainly wasn’t it.

  “Dad!” I cried. “What are you doing?”

  Behind me, my mom, always quick on her feet, rushed to the hysterical nurse and helped her out the door.

  He stopped and licked his lips. “Finn, that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt!”

  Hot magma of horror filled me, erupting in a shrill squeal of, “What, eating the nurse?”

  “Yes! She tasted so good! I feel so alive!” He examined his hands and started to lick the blood off.

  My stomach churned and I struggled to keep down everything I had eaten. Bologna and cheese are best enjoyed only once.

  Now, I didn’t curse much back then and especially not around adults, but “What the fuck, Dad?” came out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  He froze and lifted his gaze to me. Instead of chastising me for my language, he cocked his head to consider the question. “I don’t know, Son. For the last day, I’ve felt like I was starving. Nothing I ate helped. Then, when Diane was reaching across me to adjust my pillow, I smelled her, and she just smelled so good that I couldn’t stop myself. I just reached up and took a bite.”

  I gawked at him in horror and incomprehension, my voice emerging in small guttural noises.

  With half lidded eyes and a low, wistful voice, he said, “She tasted even better than she smelled, Finn! It was amazing…”

  I struggled for something to say in his pause and failed.

  “I feel great!”

  “Dad, you just took a bite out of a person!”

  He frowned and shook his head. “I know. It’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “Strange?” I croaked out. “Strange? Dad, this is so past strange, I don’t know what to call it.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I can’t believe I never noticed how good people smelled, and that I’ve never tried biting someone before.”

  “No, Dad! That’s not strange, that’s normal. Taking a bite out of somebody is strange! That’s not something people do! People don’t eat other people!”

  “No, of course not!” he said and shook his head again. “That’s just…”

  Somewhere in my dad’s brain, two realities collided. I watched the conflict on his face.

  “Wrong! Dad!” I shouted. “The word you’re looking for is ‘wrong’!”

  “Finn,” my dad drawled. He moved his gaze to his hands. “I think there’s something wrong with me.” He said it unemotionally, as if he were talking about our car.

  “Yes, Dad, there is.”

  His voice dropped as he continued studying his hands. “I think I should be feeling shocked.”

  I nodded vigorously, happy that we seemed to be making progress.

  After a moment of contemplation, his face brightened, and he looked up at me wide-eyed and hopeful. “Do you think you can bring Diane back in?”

  Definitely not as much progress as I had hoped. A commotion stirred in the hallway. I wouldn’t have long. I had to do something.

  “Dad, if I touch you, will you promise not to bite me?”

  His face scrunched with indignation. “Of course, Son. I would never bite you! Why would you even think that?”

  I didn’t even go there. Instead, I started to grab for his hands, had second thoughts, and snatched his arm where it came out of the sleeve of the bunny nightie.

  I closed my eyes. Frantically, I dove into his essence once again. It was a trick Spring had shown me right after her oak tree had fallen. The first time I’d done it had been after the battle of the oak to save his life. The second time, I’d done it to pull him out of his coma. This time, it wasn’t just my fires burning there; I felt something else: Essence de Nurse, no doubt. I tapped Spring to help me and started blowing on the fires of his soul once more. His body responded with increased vitality, and I “blew” until Spring stopped me.

  You should go no further, This One.

  I pulled out, light-headed, as if I had just run a double marathon. Sweat rolled down my forehead and stuck my hair to my scalp, and I gasped for air. I fell back into the closest chair.

  My dad sat up in bed. “Wow, that was amazing. I feel fantastic!” He saw me and asked, “Finn? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  He reached for me and caught sight of his hands. “Oh, my god! What happened to my hands? What happened to me, Finn? Why am I bleeding?”

  I gaped at him, and then rallied my scattered troops. “Dad, don’t you remember? You just took a bite out of your nurse.”

  Confusion snared his brow. “I thought that was just a dream.” He continued to stare at his hands and then took a tentative lick. He started to smile, but instead it turned into an expression of disgust. “Finn, why does this blood taste so good?”

  Because I broke you, I answered silently.

  Spring had nearly killed me when she manifested a body and tried to stop Jen, Gregg, and their chainsaw. When my dad tried to help me, I’d replaced my stolen vitality with his, jumped into the battle, and inadvertently left him to die. Later, I’d come back to help him. I’d ke
pt him alive, but broke something, some vital part of his essence.

  It is appropriate for a parent to give his life so that his offspring may live.

  I shook my head helplessly and watched the orderlies burst in and tie him down.

  Old Doc Anderson had a Farm …

  Later that day in Doctor Anderson’s office, while my mom sat with my dad, the blue needles of the doctor’s gaze pierced me through like a bug on a board. I was trying to talk him out of committing my dad, hoping to have better success than Mom.

  “As I told your mother, your dad has changed, Finn,” he said with his ever-so-reasonable and patient voice. “You know it as well as I do.”

  I didn’t say anything while I squirmed in silence. Spring’s silent agreement didn’t help anything.

  “I’m admitting him to my clinic so I can observe him and give him appropriate care.”

  “You can’t do that!” I blurted in a panic. Without my continued support, Dad would slide back into his coma—unless he could satisfy his needs in another way. I shuddered at the thought.

  Herr Doktor, blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan that he was, practiced his sympathetic face on me. “Finn, I know you think I’m being cruel, and for some reason, you see me as your enemy. But, believe me, I am not. Right now, your dad is a danger to those around him. If I let him go home with you, and he hurts someone else, the blame would fall to me.”

  “He’s not a danger! He was just confused and dreaming. He said so himself. Look, he hasn’t done anything to anyone else since then.”

  “He’s been restrained, Finn.”

  Oh, right.

  “But he’s just as appalled at what he did as everyone else! He’s really alright! There’s nothing wrong with him!” I lied into the glare of that gaze.

  He shook his head, “Finn, we both know he’s not ‘alright.’ I can see that part of him is appalled at what he did, but inside, where I think even he can’t see, part of him relished the experience.”

  “That’s not true!” My voice cracked. Damn his laser eyes. Anderson was too sharp. That didn’t mean I didn’t agree with his assessment, but it was my dad!

  Pity lined his face now. “You say he’s okay, but you don’t believe it either, Finn.”