He swallowed, trying to stay relaxed. “And then you’ll have your wicked way with me?”
She snorted. “Obviously.”
Kay settled back into her meditation and closed her eyes.
Ethan let his eyes shut, hyper-aware of every sound and every movement Kay made beside him. Her slow, even breaths. The sound of fabric sliding across her skin. When had he last felt like this? He was exhilarated and slightly aroused just from standing next to a woman.
A strong pull distracted him from his thoughts—an awareness of waves of velvet darkness emanating from their joined hands. With his eyes closed, all of his senses focused on the point where their skin touched. It was as if he was being wrapped in a swirling cloud of gentle darkness shot through with deep shimmering blues, slowly disconnecting him from the rest of the world.
In response, a strange misty shadow seemed to rise in his sternum, gleaming with forest green and slowly intertwining with the Shadows pouring out from Kay beside him.
He reached for the Shadows reflexively, trying to hold the strange clouds within him, but Kay nudged him gently, whispering, “Let it happen.”
He relaxed, allowing himself to trust her and let go.
There was a tug, and then the joined Shadows gently expanded out of his body, still connected but moving steadily away from them like a long, writhing, amorphous rope.
Goose bumps flickered up the back of his neck, and he opened his eyes. They were still standing against the church wall. Part of him could feel the brick at his back and the ground beneath his feet—but now his awareness extended so much further. He could sense the garden, the air, and the buildings around them. And he could see Shadows around everything.
Their Shadows unfurled further as Kay sent out small questing tendrils into the aged building across from them, and he followed, supported by her Shadows, surfing through the air. He almost laughed at the sense of flying, the exhilarating surge of energy and connection, while his Shadows leaped and twisted, following Kay.
She reached the hospital building and, together, they sank through the first layer of bustle and business, hospital comings and goings. They settled further, down into the murmuring, whispering noise of many souls, some hopeful, others in pain and sorrow.
They descended slowly, allowing the murmuring to disappear, merging deeply into the very essence of the old building. And there, in the center, a sense of horror grew. A thick sludge alive with malice.
Ethan felt, rather than saw, the images of lost souls, people so bent down by the world that they had lost all hope. Destroyed by punishment, starvation, and grief. Beside them were flickering Shadow images of people filled with greed and corruption, bullies and sadists, and the horror that they meted out upon their charges.
Ethan jerked back, filled with a sickly sense of revulsion, and somehow, at a great distance, he was aware that Kay had tightened her grip on his hand.
Her rippling Shadows wrapped more firmly around his and dragged him up. She flew them up at speed back through the layers, past the images, the feelings, and the whispering to hurl them out into the open, fresh spring air. Then, unerringly, she guided them back into the safety of their own bodies.
He sagged back, unsettled, a bitter, acidic taste in his mouth as disgust and shock crept up through his gut. He had been flying, loving the powerful rush of freedom, of awareness of all the life around him, and then had plunged, so unexpectedly, into something truly foul. “What the hell was that?”
Kay released his hand to reach up and stroke the furrowed line on his forehead. “Sorry, maybe I should have warned you.”
“You think?” he asked tersely, annoyed and shaken.
She let her hand drop and leaned back, away from him, and he immediately missed the feeling of her body against his.
“I wanted to show you something that you would know is real. This hospital used to be a workhouse. In fact, Dickens’Oliver Twistis based on the workhouse that was here. That’s what you could sense.”
Ethan’s heart still hammered in his chest and his palms were damp with the shock and revulsion of experiencing all those ancient fears and pains.
He wished he could take Kay’s hand back in his. Wished he could reclaim the sense of connection, of joy and anticipation that he had felt beside her only a few minutes before.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he argued. “It’s just a pile of bricks.”
“That many people with such strong emotions creates an energy. Everybody—even the Duine—knows the truth of that. Different people call it different things, but we call it a Shadow. It’s left a vibration, if you like, and you can still feel it.”
“We felt the Shadow energy from the workhouse hundreds of years ago?”
“Yes.”
“And you can do that with any building?”
She shrugged. “To a degree. It depends on the intensity of the feelings. The more powerful the feelings, the more of a Shadow they leave. Experienced Shadow Weavers can even use Shadows to show specific events if there was enough emotion involved.”
“And what did we feel at the beginning? All those voices?”
