The invasive Shadow in her mind tightened, and she froze against the wall, watching in horror as James, very slowly and subtly, unnoticed by anyone else, started to pull at the Shadows around them.
He took out a similar kind of tube to the one he’d used earlier, but this time it was bigger and covered in unfamiliar dark runes. The runes were barbed and spiked, and somehow malicious, even though she couldn’t read them, and Kay swallowed against the acid rising in her throat.
James emptied a puddle of sludgy blackness into his hand, rolling and smearing it in his palm. Then he stuck it on the wall behind him, where it clung in a shivering, glutinous mass.
The darkness around her swirled as James drew the Shadows from the room in streams of dark mist. The combination of sludge and Shadows churned together as he poured them into the growing darkness on the wall. It was a malignant, growing stain, pulsing with wrongness.
“What’s in that?” Kay asked, unable to keep the horror from her voice.
He hardly glanced at her. “It’s a blood Shadow.”
“AbloodShadow?” she repeated in a whisper, stunned and appalled. The dark Shadows were formed from blood. God. Suddenly their strange viscosity, how dense they were, even their corrupting, invasive power made an awful sense.
A grim intensity radiated between James and the Shadow behind them. He twisted his hands, gesturing, and slowly the swirling blackness oozed up to the ceiling and then flowed across from the wall to the front entrance in a swathe of darkness.
James was distracted, his concentration almost entirely on the growing Shadow at the door. His influence over her mind weakened and flickered. Kay stayed still and quiet, waiting for the second that he would be distracted enough that she could rip back control.
He pumped more Shadows into the growing pool, watching it spread slowly down to the floor at the front entrance. Then he flicked his wrist and suddenly the Shadow formed into the shape of a tall man swathed in a dark coat and balaclava, standing menacingly at the door.
It was a mockery of all the tiny Shadow men they’d amused themselves with through the years. And worse, something about the blood Shadow was darkly real. Tangible. So thick and realistic that even the Duine patients would see it. A terrible perversion of everything a Shadow should be.
James lifted a hand and the Shadow man reacted like a puppet, yanking up dark gloved hands holding what looked like a large automatic rifle.
As if in slow motion, the exhausted-looking mother in the waiting area looked up and followed Kay’s appalled gaze toward the door. She froze for a moment and then started to scream in high-pitched, hysterical shrieks that echoed through the A&E.
James didn’t waver. He used his free hand to pull up a series of small wasp-like Shadows and sent them spinning into the room. They smashed into the pot plant and knocked it over with a loud crash, and then pummeled into the wall in a series of harsh bangs that added to the discordant screams.
Patients poured out of their chairs, barreling into each other, screaming and shouting. A baby wailed. Blood Shadows slithered down the walls, burning where they landed, ramping up the terror in the crowd. Someone triggered an alarm and a loud siren blared in a discordant wail, adding to the panic.
Everything was noise and fear and chaos as James dropped the crashing Shadow wasps and used his hands in concert to pull the puppet rifle up and fire off a round of Shadow bullets that seemed to coalesce out of the same dark substance.
The bullets were real. God.
They smashed into the glass around the reception desk, walls, and chairs, paint flying as they impacted. A man was hit by one in his shoulder as he ran frantically through the chaos, and he lurched forward, screaming and clutching his arm as bright red bloomed across his shirt.
A muscle jumped in James’s jaw, but he didn’t stop.
Kay threw everything she had against the blood Shadow in her mind. Sweat dripped down her back as she fought, desperately forcing it out and away. So very slowly. Too slowly.
Everything happened as if at a huge distance, even the chaos and the fear. The world had erupted around her but she remained locked in a battle for her own mind.
The Shadow puppet seemed to grow even taller as James poured his concentration into it, using both his hands to manipulate the puppet, the rifle, and the flying bullets. For that moment, he wasn’t thinking about her at all.
Kay fought against the burning pain, gathering her Shadows and what little parts of herself she could control. Screaming out her agony, she gave one last concerted heave—and suddenly her mind was free.
She reached up and pulled at the sticky, black mass, grunting in pain as the tendrils clung on. Her hand burned as she fought to release herself, slowly tugging the blood Shadow away from its grip on her spinal cord.
With a last heave, she finally managed to pull the dark mass off her skin. She wrapped it in a swathe of Shadows and squeezed down to crush it until it disintegrated into wisps of oily smoke.
James swore viciously, his eyes flicking toward her, but he was too embroiled with the Shadow gunman to retaliate.
The siren howled and people screamed and ran. James pulled up his hand and the Shadow gunman turned the rifle up to spray the ceiling with dark bullets, chunks of plaster and paint raining down as the lights exploded and the room was plunged into twilight.
The only remaining illumination came from emergency lights along the floor and the green of the computer screens in the reception area, turning the waiting room into an alien landscape of destruction. But Kay was finally free. She spun toward James and grabbed his arm, determined to stop him. She pulled him hard until he stumbled, losing connection to his Shadow puppet.
He turned on her, teeth bared, the lines of his neck rigid with tension—consumed with his connection to the blood Shadow and filled with rage. His eyes were dark and lifeless as he lifted his arm, and before she could react, he backhanded her brutally across her cheek, splitting the skin under her eye.
It broke through her last drop of restraint. Pain throbbed through her head, but so did fury. All her confusion and grief fell away, and Kay rushed him, refusing to allow him even one moment to connect with the abomination he’d created.
