Alfred drummed his fingers on the top of the kitchen table while he waited for Vanessa to serve him the morning cup of coffee she insisted on preparing. Normally, he’d find her incessant flirting amusing, but with so much riding on his success with Alison, her friend was rapidly becoming a nuisance that he couldn’t afford to have. Heloise’s frantic phone call telling him that Nick guessed his kidnappers were shadow walkers billowed the embers of his determination into enormous flames. Time was of the essence.
He also needed to speed things along with Alison. He was making progress, but not nearly fast enough. He’d managed to get her to kiss him the night before, only to be told how guilty she felt because Vanessa liked him too. Since he’d already had sex with Vanessa -never mind the circumstances behind that sex- she felt she was wronging her friend by allowing anything to happen between them.
He’d
Alison was sitting at the kitchen table when Alfred entered. She responded to his bright smile with one of her own. “Have you seen Vanessa this morning?”Remembering a conversation that he’d eavesdropped on via the hidden camera, he said, “She mentioned that she’d planned on going back to school. Her car is gone. Maybe she’s enrolling?” He walked to the coffee pot. “Do you mind if I have some? My coffee maker is on the blink.”“Please, help yourself,” Alison said, while scowling in thought as she struggled to remember that fact. “When did she say this?”“Yesterday,” he said with his back to her as he calmly placed a few drops from the vile Ocilian gave him into the remnants of the pot of rich, dark java. He carried the pot over to her and replenished her cup without asking. She smiled her thanks as she added more cream and the
Martin wore a look of surprise when Alfred answered Alison’s front door. “Fancy seeing you here. What miracle occurred to get you back into this house?”“Flowers,” Alfred said over his shoulder as he walked back into the kitchen. “I’ve got cookies that need to come out of the oven.”Martin followed him into the kitchen and looked around. The table was laden with freshly baked oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies. He inhaled their tantalizing aroma while reaching for a generously sized oatmeal with raisons. He took a bite and hummed his appreciation when the delicious flavors burst forth from its soft center. “I’m confused.”“Really?” Alfred said as he removed a batch of hot cookies from the baking sheet. “Why so?”“How are you here?” Martin asked. “Why are you here? Where’s Nick? Where’
In an effort to make amends as well as make himself useful, Martin offered to fire up the grill for barbequed chicken. He’d spent enough time around Alison to know that it was one of her favorite foods. When her face lit up at the offer, he knew he was on his way back into her good graces.While at the grill, he did his best to observe both Alfred and Alison. He’d seen too much of her interaction with Nick to believe that she’d walk away from him and accept Alfred so fully in such a short period of time. Something was amiss. What confused him was the fact that Alfred was also a victim of the pizza lacing and magic that day. Although he had no doubt that Alfred had, at some point over the years, taken part in a ménage á trios, he found it hard to believe that his cousin would stoop so low as to deliberately participate in such a vicious one as that. They’d not only abused poor Vanessa’s
Martin returned to Alison’s home with a heavy heart. He’d spent the night searching for Vanessa in all the places he thought she might go to, but with no luck. Now, he had the burden of having to tell her that her friend didn’t go back to their old apartment, as she’d thought. She was sure to be worried and upset. These weren’t good things to be when one was making their first shift into shadow land.It was late afternoon on the night of the new moon when he knocked on her front door. When he got no response, he walked around to the back of the house and knocked on the kitchen door.Again, nothing,He tried the handle, found the door unlocked, and walked inside.Standing perfectly still, he listened for signs of life in the house. He could hear the faint sounds of love making coming from upstairs. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to decipher that it was Alison and Alfred
Nick wrestled with what to do. It was the night of the new moon and he should be returning to shadow land for regeneration and rejuvenation. He could skip one new moon with limited consequences to himself, but more than that would be a problem.He guessed his captor was a shadow person simply by the way he was being treated. It wasn’t as cruel and harsh as one would expect from a hunter who was simply waiting for him to leave his body on the new moon, so it could be destroyed before he returned. Hunters had a sick way of thinking that, since the body was empty of the spirit because it was in shadow land, they weren’t committing murder by destroying it. They failed to understand that a small part of the soul and the spirit were still connected to the body and not all was departed. If that was the case, then the shadow walker would truly be dead.If he was correct and his captor was a shadow walker, then he should be return
Martin clung to the rope that was attached to the slender seat as he was boldly lowered from the helicopter onto the deck of the yacht. When King Rufus said he’d have the helicopter take him to the yacht, he assumed they’d be landing on it and he’d be stepping out onto the deck. Instead, it hovered over the deck of the yacht as the wind swung his body to and fro while he, little by little, was lowered until his feet were able to support him.The helicopter stayed in position while Martin scrambled about the yacht in search of Nick. He found him chained by the wrist and ankle in a small room that looked like it was intended to be used for utility, not to accommodate a human.“So, cousin,” Martin said in a voice that he hoped sounded light hearted. “It seems it’s my turn to rescue you.”“So, it would appear,” Nick said as he struggled to stand. “They have me chained so
The searing pain right down into his bones was far greater than Martin could have ever imagined. He didn’t know what to do to relieve it. It hurt to stand. It hurt to sit. It hurt to lie down. He wanted to scream the pain away but feared appearing weak in front of the king; especially since Nick was behaving in such a damnable stoic manner. What Martin didn’t realize was that Nick was in so much pain he was practically frozen by it. He couldn’t get his ribcage to work well enough to take in the amount of air that was needed to operate his vocal cords enough to protest the situation. As terrible as it was being cramped and clamped to the wall while a hostage, he’d much rather be there than going through the trauma his body was experiencing after being pulled from the mundane side of the veil to shadow land. The doors of the castle anti-chamber burst open as the king’s physician and his assistant rushed to tend to the men. Prep
The dark side of shadow land should have rightfully been called the pits of hell. Not only was the atmosphere uncomfortably close and hot, but the lighting was dim and dingy, and the place was absolutely filthy. They quickly ascertained that they were too clean and too well dressed, so they adjusted their clothes and hair to better fit in.Time on the shadow side of the veil was measured differently than it was on the mundane side. It moved at a slower pace; which was why the shadow walkers were able to accomplish so much in what the mundanes considered a short amount of time. Had they been on the mundane side measuring time, they would have searched for Vanessa’s whereabouts for only a day before finding her. As it was, on the shadow side, it was the better part of a week.Their cover story was that they were recent converts to the dark side of shadow land and were still learning their way around. Since it was a more common oc