Somewhere in the back of his petrified, screaming mind, it occurred to Roy that this creature could be a mirage, a hallucination, as the Governor had described. And yet, the longer he stared at the shadow, the harder it was to confirm this suspicion. The anthropoid quality of its features was undeniable, even more terrifying for its familiarity. Was it possible, then, that this creature was of the same breed as those that had compelled the Radiant Droves to take their own lives? Or were they one and the same?
And does that mean there’s a third fate awaiting me?Roy wondered, recalling his earlier rumination about how these apparent hallucinations and supernatural sightings would inevitably conclude.Is that to be my end, too?Suicide?
For one paralyzing moment, he forgot why he was where he was, in this artifact of the old world, why he had left Dawnseve Manor at all. He could not move, nor could he shift his gaze from the shadow’s. His skin was clammy, his hands slathered in sweat. It tilted its head toward him, but the implication was lost on Roy. All he could see were those piercing scarlet eyes, ogling him. An unearthly interrogation. The shadow glided forward, a single daring movement, and then Roy turned and ran down through the bookshelves.
He stumbled forward, disoriented, his hair tumbling across his face and the laces of his right boot coming undone. Then the boot itself slid off his foot. The ground came up to meet him, and by instinct his body braced for impact, but as his sock-clad foot hit the floorboards, relief punched through his chest. He resumed his sprint, racing around the corner.
His breathing ragged and dry, Roy lurched forward step by aching step, his enervation and disorientation turning his vision into a blur of parchment pages and foggy moonlight. But he ran on, his foot striking the floor and producing intervals of resonantthwacksthrough the library. He gasped, sweat plastering his tailcoat to his flushed, feverish skin, and miraculously found the courage to glance over his shoulder.
Somehow the shadow had almost caught up to him, and its dark, transparent hand reached out toward him in a hooked claw. Its eyes blazed in the night like cavernous wells of magma, throwing hectic red shadows across the books. He was not sure how he hadn’t heard it before, but Roy could now distinctly make out a low, ululating cry.
He dashed around another corner and into the next shelf passageway. He was nearing the last dregs of his energy, though, and he realized only then he had nothing with which to defend himself—nor, if he was being honest, the ability. Another quick look over his shoulder revealed the shadow—the ghost?—to be unarmed, but that did nothing to quell his anxiety. Maybe he could confuse it, make it lose its way. But he was becoming quickly delirious himself, and the pressure and tiredness that had been piled upon him were doing little to help matters.
A feral, shrill scream exploded through the library, echoing about the bookshelves and rattling the glass cabinets Roy had observed earlier. He started, then staggered back, trying to find his balance, before the wind whipped past him and released a hysterical shriek. He shot out a hand and clutched the shelf nearest him but was interrupted by another blast of wind, which pummeled him in the gut. He keeled over, breathless, let out a wheezing gasp, and then fell to his knees, holding the shelf all the while. But he could not keep up his weight a moment longer.
Roy crumpled to the ground, burying his hands in his hair. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth, a bolt of hot pain shooting through his muscles. He uttered a raw, broken scream, but it sounded so quiet beneath the bellowing wind. Pressure built behind his eyes, and tears leaked out, streaking down his face.
Ahead of him, the breeze quieted, as if a door had been shut in the face of a storm. He looked up, hesitant. The shadow was still staring at him, but it only stood there now, its finger pointed at him in silent accusation. He grimaced, waiting for its killing blow, for some black, infectious mist to spiral out of its finger, seep into his chest and quiet the pounding drum that was his heart, but the shadow performed no such move. Instead, it swung its finger back and forth, swaying from Roy to the shelves, the shelves to Roy. A pendulum determining his fate. He was so absorbed by the cryptic gesture that he didn’t even notice the shadow advancing toward him until it was bearing down upon him, its blank, murky face a hairbreadth from his own.
Panic overtook his body. His hands shook; his skin tingled; his vision fragmented and blurred like he was looking through a smudged kaleidoscope. He thrashed on the floor and flung out a weak fist at the shadow, but it flew through the creature with frightening ease. As skin and shadow connected, a sound materialized in his head, pitching higher and higher until it clarified into a crazed cacophony. He heard distorted screams and guttural howls, akin to those of a wolf, and earth-rumbling roars rebounding as though from the bottom of a deep, deep well.
And for a split second, flashing before his eyes like a flare of light, Gabriel was looming over him, rising up from Roy’s memories, his deranged grin stretching wider and wider across his lips, pulling at the skin of his mouth,rippingit—
Roy shrieked, his eyes rolling in his skull. He scratched the sides of his head, trying to burrow into his temples, tear flesh from bone and rip the voices out of his mind. “Stop!” he screamed. “Please, Gabriel, not tonight!Stop!Please, just stop—”
Then a hand closed around his arm and hauled Roy to his feet.
“Look at me.Lookat me, damn you! Are you hurt? Are you all right?”
Roy froze, his hair strewn in knots across his face, and laid his hands upon the chest of the shadow. But it wasn’t the shadow, he saw as he opened his eyes.
It was a blond, hazel-eyed, and strikingly beautiful man.
“I’m . . .” Roy whispered. “I’m fine.”
The man released Roy, glowering. “Wonderful. Then give me one decent reason why I climbed three staircases to find you screaming and sprawled on the ground.”
6
Roy regarded the stranger carefully.
He looked close to Roy’s own age, twenty-four or twenty-five. He was dressed in a loose-collared tunic, brown trousers, and tattered black boots, the half-done laces sagging across the floorboards. A pair of square-rimmed spectacles sat upon the bridge of his long nose, and his hazel eyes were as bright with beauty as they were shining with suspicion. A stray thread of moonlight flickered across his short blond hair. His defined features possessed an imperious cruelty: brows sharply furrowed, cheeks sharp as a snake’s fangs, his full lips crooked with unconscious judgment. If men were weapons, this young man was carved from the steel that had been cast aside: too sharp to lay in a warrior’s hands.
“One reason,” he repeated, his cheeks scarlet. He nodded to his left hand, which was gripping a thick leatherbound book. “I have quite a lot of work to do—unlike you, it seems—and I do not take kindly to interruptions.” He showed no strain, no sign of exertion, but Roy wasn’t surprised. He had likely heard Roy screaming, rolled his eyes, and then wandered up from his burrow at a leisurely stroll.
Roy stepped to the side, looking at the space behind the man, but there was no trace of the shadow that had accosted him.
“Time is a precious commodity,” said the man, “so I suggest you stop looking around for the answer and start using your words.”
“It’s not there,” Roy babbled. “It’s... It’s notthere.”
The man glanced behind him, then turned back to Roy, his nostrils flaring. “Come off it, would you? I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. Now tell me why I came up here.”
Roy parted his lips to sputter the truth, but doing so would only give the man, a decidedly irritable fellow, incentive to use Roy’s illusions as bait. No, perhaps he didn’t need to confess what he’d seen. He could reshape the narrative, distort the truth to improve his image, but when he closed his mouth, then opened it again, what came out was far beyond what he’d planned.
“I fell over,” Roy said.
The man studied him for a long moment, as if he’d heard wrong, then sighed. “You fell over.”
