Page 12 of Safe in Shadow (Pine Ridge Universe #22)

“ N yx!”

Her wail dragged him from his hiding place in the corner, a slender inch of blackness beside the wainscotting near her bed. His prison.

It hurt to move, it hurt even to hold himself in one form.

He’d wanted to battle.

He hadn’t expected to almost lose.

He didn’t have a clear head or a clear heart.

All he had were claw marks and teeth marks, invisible to every eye, black on black wounds that ached and throbbed, and made him long to give up.

Maybe if he sank into that abyss, maybe if he just let them win.

.. They could rip him to pieces, and he’d just end.

Or maybe he’d become one of them.

Maybe he’d always be doomed to come back, and each time he’d be more monster and less man.

Grace’s cry and frantic footsteps pounding up the stairs undid his self-pity for the moment.

“Nyx! James? Are you actually James? What do you know about this town? I think it’s haunted!

” She was babbling, rushing past him to the bathroom, turning the shower to full hot so that steam began to billow within seconds.

She waited impatiently by the mirror, her eyes widening when she saw Nyx struggle to grow into anything but a shadowy smudge, hovering near the floor. “Oh, geez. Are you okay?”

No, he thought, and couldn’t bring himself into shape to write on the mirror.

“Oh, no!” Grace sank to her knees, hands outstretched, then back at her sides, and then outstretched again, molding the air around him as if trying to rub his shoulders and hold him together.

It helped. Just knowing she was there helped.

“You don’t have to talk yet. Not that we talk.

Listen. I went to the library to look up the history of this place.

I knew some of it, but I wanted to find out about the original owners and who lived here before it became any sort of hospital or institution.

I read about the Cameron family. Do you.

.. Does that ring any bells? James and Cynthia? ”

The pain hit him so hard that he felt his form implode, a shower of shadowy mist ripping from his chest as Grace backed away and screamed, scooting on her bottom, then scrambling on her knees.

Cynthia.

Pale face. Pink cheeks. Dark curls.

Evil. Evil. Evil.

Faces spun in a spiral, Cynthia. James. Him.

He hadn’t seen or recalled his own face for so long. He wasn’t the handsome one. That was James.

Dear, wonderful James!

Evil.

The three images smashed together and vanished, leaving a cold hollow in his mind.

He knew one thing now.

Pieces of himself rejoined, stretched, and grew into a spidery silhouette of a man, all spindles and joints, something grotesque, judging by Grace’s horrified scream. His hand slammed against the mirror, making a gruesome handprint that took up most of the glass. Grace let out a whimper.

He composed himself—or at least his hands. One finger scrawled, his writing sloppy and jagged this time.

Not James.

Brother.

GRACE COWERED AGAINST the bathroom door. If her knees had worked, she would have stood, ripped open the door, and escaped at the sight of what Nyx had become.

Then he wrote, and the fear began to ebb.

“Your brother was James?” she whispered, voice small and unable to get any bigger around the knot of terror in her throat. “I have a brother. He’s a character, but he’s all right. I’m sorry... I’m sorry about James.”

The form that was still Nyx, not James, was shrinking. It was wavery and blurry on the edges, but what did she expect? The guy had been a blob, then shards of shadow, an explosion of darkness that quivered and dragged itself back together like something out of a horror movie.

She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t cause him pain, because to her mind, what she had just seen was pain and misery taking form. “Do you want to talk about him?”

A long, scrawling No appeared in the fog.

“That’s okay. We can talk when you’re ready. Hey, can you talk-talk? Without the mirror? I mean, have you ever tried it with a human?”

WHY WERE HIS MEMORIES so fractured?

Yes, he’d spoken once. Whispered often. To one human. Tried with another. One heard, one couldn’t.

James. James couldn’t hear him.

Cynthia could.

The sickening sense of mingled evil and dread washed over him again.

Why? What evil had he done to Cynthia?

Something in his mind told him that was not right—otherwise, why would he be speaking to Cynthia after he was dead and in this miserable mockery of life?

But he had. He remembered clearly standing behind the fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked beauty and hissing endlessly.

About what?

The dread and sickening feelings returned, but no clear memories came with them.

Could only women hear him? Various occupants of the house over the years had glimpsed him, yet no one had ever fully “seen” him. Well, none that had remained. None that had attempted to befriend him, like Grace.

What they had done was so much more than friendly...

Words crept out of him in a despairing, barely audible hiss. “It doesn’t work.”

Grace’s eyebrows arched. “Well, I’m guessing it kinda does, because I could hear you. Barely.”

He said nothing, surprise removing any concrete thoughts, however small. He couldn’t explain the tangle of memories in his head, anyway.

How had he hurt Cynthia when he was dead? Had he hurt her? Why was Cynthia so connected to the single word in his mind? Evil. Why, when he could not even remember his name, could he remember the seething, all-consuming hatred of her?

Where had James gone? Why couldn’t his brother hear his warnings about... About what exactly?

Thoughts were slippery. They fell through what was left of his fingers, and they were only shadows anyway.

Grace. Grace had been slippery, deliciously warm, living, pulsing, and slippery.

Grace didn’t fall through his fingers.

He wrapped his fingers over her wrist, engulfing it, locking her to him. “Everything shatters. You’re solid,” he hissed. “Let me hold?”

He could hear her gulp. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

GRACE TRIED NOT TO panic. How could shadows seem so hard?

Well, last night, he seemed pretty hard, didn’t he?

God, this is so messed up. How can he be so House of Horrors one second and make me so wet the next?

She hated to admit it, but the terror that she’d felt was fleeting, and his possessive grip on her arm and the memories of last night and her erotic dreams pushed desire to the front.

Not that we can act on it now.

Grace scooted closer. “I can sit here as long as you want,” she whispered.

THE LONGER THEY SAT in silence, steam clouding them, the more solid he became. The spindly, scattered figure that seemed like pain personified shrank to a man-sized shape, and this time, the black paled further and further until there were shades of black and gray.

Discernible eyes.

Features.

A handsome face, with hard, haggard angles, cheekbones and jawline connected with gaunt hollows.

She could even see individual strands of black hair forming—of course, it might not actually be black, but when your friend (lover?) is grayscale, you get what you get.

The hair was long and limp, falling over one side of his neck and halfway over his face.

Silence was all well and good—but it wasn’t something that came naturally to her, not when there was someone else around, especially not someone clenching his fingers around her arm like she was his only lifeline.

“So. The town being haunted? You know anything about it?”

Nyx shook his head.

“You don’t know, or it isn’t?”

“I can’t leave this area—the house and what used to be the grounds. But people come here. Some bad. Some good. Some who know—about me.”

She puzzled that sentence out in her mind for a while. “Do you think there are others like you?”

His cheek muscle jumped. “There are many creatures we never see while we live. You can see me now. You’ll start to see others.” His back suddenly straightened, and his dark eyes shone into hers with such intensity that it made her jerk back.

He didn’t release her arm. He simply stretched with her, face serious and unsmiling.

“I will not let the evil ones touch you. Except me.”

Grace swallowed. “Are you... evil?”

Another long silence. His fingers slowly unhooked from her arm. “I don’t know.”