Page 86 of Marked By Shadows

“And led the cops to the car and the missing girls by accident,” I added.

“Right, and tell me exactly how that happened? You stop to help a guy and end up running into the woods, which leads to cops and a trip to the ER?” Lukas demanded. Alex and I exchanged a look and must have been silent for far too long because Lukas cursed. How much had Manning told him? “I know you’re both fucking weird so just tell me.”

I heard Sky in the background trying to soothe him, but it didn’t seem to help. Telling Lukas we suspected we’d seen the incarnation of Death, or whatever, would hardly calm him down. “I saw a shadow,” I said. “Not a person shadow. Something moving where there shouldn’t have been. It’s why I stopped. It’s why I ran. I don’t normally see stuff.”

It was Lukas’s turn to be silent. Finally, he said. “Ghosts?”

I sighed, readying myself for another debate on the American view of dead people. But Alex interrupted. “Not exactly. They were mostly shadows. I didn’t see any people-like things either. They didn’t look like ghosts to me.” He paused and gulped. “That first night that Byrony went missing, I saw her ghost like she was standing right in front of me. She was that clear. Joe’s too, but he’s still alive.”

“Physically,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed softly. “There were shadows in those woods too. The ones behind Freya’s house. Undefined, mostly. I guess I’d begun to think of the shadows like that as the really old dead, or maybe just not human at all.”

Lukas growled. “Come home. No messing with more supernatural shit. We just got you back.”

“I don’t think most of this is supernatural related,” Alex said, surprising me. We’d seen a lot since arriving. The ghost cat that morphed into something dark, the mass of shadows, and the Death thing. “I’m not getting that vibe.”

“You’re not getting that vibe…” Lukas sounded like he wanted to reach through the phone and strangle his brother. But it was then that I realized I wasn’t really either. I’d felt a bit of it in the woods that first night when something touched me, but it hadn’t stayed. More passed through me. Then on the road, the silence, created by the panic attack which had me dashing into the woods, it hadn’t been the same.

I remembered the feeling of wriggling flesh, like I’d been dropped into a pit of fire ants, totally unbearable, every single time I stood in front of the LaLaurie Mansion. The weird bird chitter that echoed into the darkness until all other noise was snuffed out hadn’t happened either. More a tuning into my own heartbeat pounding and ears flooded with the sound of blood pumping. Not that vacuum of all sound. Did it mean all we had encountered was less terrifying? No. But perhaps not the demons we normally dealt with. Whatever these supernatural things were, they weren’t directed at us.

“Maybe the killer is the target of the activity?” I asked Alex. “Instead of us. Which is why it’s less intense.”

“A sort of karma perhaps?” Alex said. “Maybe. Or a signal that whatever they are chasing is the true darkness in all this. But whoever is killing these people is human.”

“That’s usually how homicide works,” Lukas said dryly.

“You guys have Marc’s death as unknown,” I pointed out. Marc had been another tour guide. He’d been murdered by some sort of ritual gone wrong. The darkness had killed him, I was pretty sure, though didn’t know how exactly the police could ever pin that down.

“Can’t put it on the dead woman. Have no proof, though everyone thinks it was her and her niece,” Lukas said. “Coroner said his death couldn’t be determined exactly, since he was cut into pieces. Internal explosion is not a thing.”

“Gross,” Alex said. “We’re eating breakfast.”

“In the car? You shouldn’t eat and drive.”

“I’m not eating,” I said, my stomach still a little queasy from the news this morning. The few pieces of fruit I’d had weren’t sitting all that peaceably. He didn’t need to know I wasn’t driving either.

“Whatever,” Lukas griped. “Finish your convention thing and come home in one piece. I don’t want to have to travel to fucking Texas to bring you both home in body bags.”

“Will you continue to poke around?” Alex asked.

“As much as I can without getting into trouble. I’d rather you both come home now.”

“All the victims have been women so far,” Alex pointed out. “Not that it’s a good thing, that they are women, just that we probably aren’t the victim of choice.”

“That we know of. As I said, there are more bodies and I don’t have details. We have no idea if that is a common denominator or a coincidence. I’ll see if I can find pictures of the missing girls. Maybe they looked alike,” Lukas said.

“Byrony was a redhead,” Alex offered.

“Amanda was African-American,” I said. “I think Sarah was blonde.”

“Not helping, Micah,” Lukas said. “Common traits, not different.”

“I barely knew any of them. Sorry.” I said, again feeling a little broken for the constant need to push people away before they hurt me too.

Alex reached over and patted my leg. “We’ll see if Micah can find anything from the group once we’re back at the cabin for the day. We’ll send you pictures and any info we find.”

“You are not detectives.”