Page 90 of Stalked By Shadows

He opened his eyes and stared at me, blue gaze soft and sleepy. “I could eat. But coffee…”

And with that suggestion I needed a cup so bad. “Fuck, you had to remind me?”

He gave me a tiny grin. “There should be food in the lobby right around the corner.”

“No one goes anywhere alone,” Lukas said, re-emerging from the bathroom looking a little more cleaned up, but still not scruff-free. I debated getting up and dragging us all out to get coffee, then reached over and grabbed the phone instead, ordering breakfast brought to the room.

“Must not be busy,” I told them. “They said it would only be twenty minutes or so.” Micah was back to his sleepy position, tucked under my chin, eyes closed, arm around my waist. I relaxed against him and watched Lukas move around the room like he had energy to spare. From getting enough rest maybe? Though I knew agitation when I saw it, especially in my brother.

“Lukas,” I called. He continued to pack, like we had somehow unpacked everything when we’d come in last night, though I knew we hadn’t. “Lukas,” I said again.

He looked up, glaring at me. “What?”

“I’m okay,” I told him.

His glare intensified.

“I am.”

“You are not fucking okay. You vanished for a month and show up in another state looking like someone took your skin for a joy ride and left you at the hospital on death’s door. And you are somehowokay?”

I flinched, his words stirring something familiar in my gut, the vague edge of a memory or something. I shoved it down. Not wanting to dwell on the new idea he put in my head. “How about I’m going to be okay?We’regoing to be okay.”

“And if it fucking takes you again?” He demanded.

“You don’t believe in that stuff,” I reminded him.

“Until you fucking vanished on camera.”

“Micah said the camera glitched.”

“Yeah, and you were out cold on the bench when it went out, and when it came back on you were gone. You wanna convince me that somehow you woke out of a deep sleep and raced off into the night in less than thirty seconds?”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I don’t remember what happened or where I’ve been.”

“Seems to be a lot of that going around. The ‘I don’t remember’ plague.” His gaze fell to Micah who was wrapped up in my arms. There was anger there. Undeserved.

“It wasn’t his fault,” I said.

“I should never have introduced the two of you. I thought you’d help each other heal. Not… Not this.”

“What happened in the garden was all about me, not him. Not his monster, mine,” I said. Let him think I was crazy. That was fine so long as he didn’t blame Micah for something none of us had any control over.

“I thought you don’t remember?” Lukas threw back at me.

“Where I was for the past month? No. What happened that night, yes. Do I understand it? No. But you said I don’t need to.” The expressions that crossed his face then was a play of confusion and then understanding. “I fell asleep in the garden and dreamed of the thing from the desert. In the dream it led me to Micah and Sarah.” Of course there had been more to it than that, but Lukas didn’t need that in his head. “That’s what I remember. My demon, not Micah’s.”

Lukas stopped moving, frozen in place for a minute, silent, thinking, perhaps even brooding. I felt Micah awake and tense against me. His face buried against my collarbone like he could hide from the angry words. How many times had he been in the middle of them? I hated that he had to be there while Lukas raged and threw angry eyes his way.

“How do you know they aren’t one and the same?” Lukas finally asked.

I processed that for a moment. First that Lukas was acknowledging that he believed. Not in our stories and the broken mindset of two men who had survived trauma, but that something was really lurking beyond what he could see. And second, how did I know they weren’t one and the same? The noises, the time lost, the stalking in the garden? Instinct really. The familiarity of the thing from the desert was something I couldn’t describe to anyone. It was like meeting an old lover you’d thought you’d forgotten, but seeing them reignited that visceral memory of your time together.

The thing that had awoken us at Micah’s place felt… different. More playful perhaps? Not as defined. Maybe that was only because I had yet to actually meet it. My demon, if that was what it was, specialized in terror, almost seemed to feed on it. The horror and terror of that day in the desert, the bone chilling black-eyed child in Micah’s garden, all to assert its power over me.Mineit had said before saving me from the shadows, or death curse, or whatever it was. A scary thought that it considered me its property. And the idea that I couldn’t remember the past month because something else might have been at the helm… not that giving him that explanation was going to ease his worry. Hell, it made mine worse.

Which was better? To be lost in an unknown world, or to have something else take over your body and live your life? I wasn’t sure.

“I know it wasn’t. It felt different,” I gave him lamely. “I’m not sure how to explain it to you—” without terrifying everyone in the room.