A Soldier of Shadows Read online

  It’s okay. They must all be staying with my grandfather in Cairo. I shouldn’t have been surprised that after hearing of my disappearance, my mother had flown straight there. It’d make no sense that she would stay here in New York when I had been last seen near Cairo.

  Still trying to fight the sick feeling in my stomach, I turned to Shayla. “I need you to transport me to Cairo,” I said. “My grandfather lives there, and I know that’s where my family must be.”

  Shayla’s map only covered New York, so I started up our old computer, connected to the Internet, and pulled up a map of Cairo on the screen. After I had located the address of my grandfather, Shayla studied the map, then nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  She touched my arm, and once again, my surroundings vanished as we traveled at lightning speed.

  When we reappeared again, it was in my grandfather’s backyard. We were standing by the pool. Looking toward the house, I was relieved to see that the back door was open. I wanted to rush in and start shouting out the names of my family, but I caught myself. If the hunters were still after me, this would be the logical place to keep watch. I remained holding onto Shayla’s hand, just in case we had to make a speedy escape, as we entered the house.

  We looked first in the small breakfast room that looked out onto the pool, then moved to the kitchen, the library, the living room, then upstairs in all the bedrooms and bathrooms. All were empty. Not even Bashira was anywhere to be found.

  Now the knot in my stomach was too tight for me to even attempt to loosen.

  Noticing my anguish, Shayla approached me. “What if they’re just out?”

  “Why would they leave the back door open?”

  “It could’ve just been a mistake.” Heading back down the stairs, the witch pointed toward the main entrance. “Looks like they remembered to lock the front door,” she said.

  I walked up to it and clutched the handle. Yes, it had been locked.

  “I’m going to try to call my grandfather,” I said.

  I picked up the handset from the coffee table in the living room and dialed my grandfather’s cell number. I bit my lip as I waited.

  The ringing continued until I reached voicemail.

  Damn.

  I could try my mother’s cell phone. Though the number I knew by heart was a US SIM card. I didn’t know if she would have the same one while in Cairo, and just suck up the roaming charges, or whether she would’ve gotten a local SIM. In any case, I tried dialing the number I knew. Voicemail again. In a last-ditch attempt, I reached for my grandfather’s phonebook in the chest of drawers and paged through it until I found Bashira’s number. When I dialed it, I was also unable to reach her.

  Shayla was eyeing me, a look of concern on her face.

  “Maybe we should wait here for a while,” she said. “It could be they are in a meeting or something… They might return soon. This house doesn’t feel like it’s been unoccupied long.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  But I didn’t want Ben to leave without me. He didn’t want to take me to The Oasis in the first place, and if I had not arrived back by the time they were ready to leave, I was sure they would not wait for me.

  “Let’s wait for an hour, and see if my family returns,” I said. I doubted Ben and the others would leave before then.

  Shayla nodded and took a seat in an armchair. I was too antsy to even think about sitting down. I paced up and down the entrance hall, my heart jumping at even the slightest of noises coming from the road outside the house.

  I kept looking up at the clock, watching the minutes go by. Ever. So. Slowly.

  Shayla didn’t say a word to me, leaving me to brood in tense silence. After we had waited forty-five minutes, I was beginning to lose hope.

  “For all we know, they could return at the end of the day,” Shayla finally called from the living room. “I don’t know why you’re assuming that something bad—”

  Her sentence was interrupted by my scream. Something had scuttled across my feet. Looking down, I was alarmed to see a huge black rat. It had gleaming yellow eyes and a creepily long gray tail. It had frozen a few feet away from me and appeared to be staring right up at me.

  Backing away, I calmed my racing heart and looked toward Shayla, who had appeared in the doorway of the living room.

  “It’s just a rat,” I said, my voice still uneven from the fright. “Just a rat,” I repeated to myself as I looked back down at the creature, still frozen in the same position.

  In all the times I’d stayed in my grandfather’s house, I’d never been aware that he had a rat problem. Perhaps the creature had crept in just today through the back door they had left open.

  Shayla let out a soft chuckle and returned to the living room. I was about to look up once again at the clock when the rodent jolted. As if in a hurry, it scurried across the floor and, to my surprise, leapt about four feet in the air, landing on an ornamental chest of drawers by the staircase.

  It turned around to face me again, its small yellow eyes looking right at me. Then something drew my attention a few inches to the right of its front feet. An object I hadn’t noticed before. An object that made my heart skip a beat. I rushed forward, barely believing my eyes. When I picked up the object in my palm, it was cool, round and heavy. I was staring down at a golden coin—identical to the coins I had in my backpack. Identical to the coins that were gifted by The Oasis.

  My mouth agape, I looked back toward the rat.

  But it was nowhere to be seen.

  Then, for the first time, I experienced the same voice Ben had. Whispery and bone-chilling, it echoed through my head:

  “Come back, River Giovanni.

  “We know who you are, and we know what you want.”

  Chapter 4: Corrine

  A cool wind caught my hair as I walked among the shadowy dunes. I had known of The Oasis’ location since the hunters had attacked the Maslen coven, but this was the first time that I had actually visited it. Now, of course, there was a spell concealing its entrance. This would make it harder for me to detect it… but I did not need its exact location.

  Once I sensed that I had neared within a hundred feet of its boundary, I stopped. Parting my cloak, I unhitched the long wooden staff that I had attached to my belt, along with a brass container of potion I’d prepared in my kitchen and a clear glass cup. I set the last two items down on the sand while I eyed the length of the staff. Positioning the pointed end of it above the ground, I dug it into the sand, pushing it down until it felt secure in its upright position. I picked up the glass cup and, with my magic, made it balance atop the tip of the staff. Then I reached for the brass container and emptied its dark blue contents into the glass.

  I watched the potion settle into the cup, watching as it began to stiffen. I had expected to need to manifest some light to see what I was doing, but the sky was clear and the moon was full tonight.

  I looked down at my watch and noted the time. Now I must wait.

  My mind wandered back to the tattoos I’d seen on River and Ben’s upper arms. Even as I thought of them, the same fear gripped me. I hadn’t wanted to speak a word of my suspicion to anyone, not even Ibrahim, until I was certain. So I’d headed straight back to the Sanctuary, locked myself in my library, and pulled down all the books on the subject that I could find. It had become clear to me after half an hour of paging through the dusty manuscripts that the only way for me to know for certain if my fear was founded was to come out here and see if I could detect the presence of these creatures myself.

  Jinn.

  I had never had direct experience with their kind, but I had read about them in the texts of my ancestors. And what I had read about them was enough to leave me terrified.

  Even among supernaturals, they were creatures of legend. Many believed them to be fairy tales made up by humans, since they were so rarely spotted. I wasn’t aware of anyone who knew where they resided back in the supernatural realm.

&n
bsp; My mind was pulled back to the present moment as a sudden movement on the sand about ten feet away from me caught my attention. Something round was moving directly toward me, so fast that I had to strain my eyes to see what it was.

  A huge beetle. Its sturdy body was covered in a dark-green shell that glinted eerily beneath the moonlight. I wasn’t sure why it was scuttling toward me. Perhaps it fancied me as food—it certainly looked big and sturdy enough to take a bite out of me.

  I wasn’t fond of beetles. Nor any insect for that matter. Not willing to wait around to see what this beetle’s agenda was, I zapped it with a spell that sent it hurtling through the air and landing somewhere far in the distance.

  Shuddering, I focused my attention back on the potion. It was still the same dark blue color, but it had become completely solid. Now I just had to wait for it to change color. I looked down at my watch. I should have my answer in five minutes, and then I could leave this place and return to the safety of The Shade… I prayed I’d return with better news than I’d come here expecting.

  Only two minutes had passed when my attention was again drawn in the same direction the beetle had approached me from. This time, I laid eyes on not an insect, but a long, beige-colored snake. A horned rattlesnake, by the looks of it. As it approached me in exactly the same manner as the beetle had, a chilling suspicion dawned on me.

  I need to get out of here. Now.

  As much as it pained me to abandon my experiment that I’d gone to such effort to prepare, this coincidence of the snake and the beetle had spooked me too much to remain. I yanked the staff from the ground and, discarding the glass of stiff potion, I vanished from the spot… At least, I tried to vanish. Summoning my powers, I closed my eyes, expecting to feel the wind whipping past me as I began hurtling back toward the island. But the sand remained beneath my feet. No matter how hard I tried to vanish, I didn’t budge.

  I opened my eyes to see the snake now only six feet away from me. It had stopped, and I could have sworn that its small, narrow eyes were fixed directly on me. Then its body began to contract. Its beige scales darkened until they’d turned an almost pitch black. Its head and tail shrank in toward the middle of its body until it had formed a fleshy ball. The ball began to spin in its place until four feet shot out from it. Then a head. A long tail. A few seconds later, I was staring down at an oversized black rat.

  But the vision remained before me for barely ten seconds before again, the creature’s limbs withdrew into itself, forming another ball and this time re-manifesting as a red scorpion. Then a jackal. Then a vulture… until finally, all the terror I’d felt on first seeing those tattoos cemented itself in my mind as I stood staring into the piercing golden eyes of a creature rarely spoken of, much less seen.

  Then a silvery voice spoke in my head:

  “Is your curiosity now satisfied, witch of The Shade?”

  Horror welled in the pit of my stomach.

  I’d just been granted a wish by a jinni.

  Chapter 5: Ben

  Imagining River reuniting with her family warmed me. I’d seen how much family meant to her, how close she was to her mother and siblings. I’d seen the pain in her eyes every time she had spoken of them. Now she would finally see them again, and if all went to plan, Shayla would return with them to The Shade within about an hour.

  After River left, I kept the cup of her blood close to me as my mother sat by my side in the submarine. I still hadn’t expressed what I felt about River to my parents, or even Rose, but I hadn’t exactly kept my affection for her secret.

  My mother tried to make some small talk as we sat together, but her mind was clearly weighed down by the worry of my failed turning. Though she didn’t speak of it, I could see it behind her eyes.

  Caleb, Rose, my grandfather and Griffin arrived through the hatch soon after River had left. This was the first time that I had seen my grandfather since arriving back. He moved toward me and gripped me in a tight hug.

  “You don’t know how relieved I am to see you again, Ben,” he said, kissing the top of my head.

  “I’m glad to be back,” I said. I just wish I could stay.

  I was surprised to see that Griffin was a vampire. Grinning, he held up his hands in mock reproach. “Come on. What chance did a human ginger boy stand on an island of vampires and dragon shifters?”

  I smirked, then drew him in for a hug and slapped him on the back.

  “You look great,” I said, giving him a wink which made my sister giggle.

  My sister turned to me. It was still bizarre to see my twin as a vampire. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get used to it, if I ever would. I guessed that she’d be feeling the same about me.

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  She grimaced. “Hungry. Thirsty. Can’t really decide which it is. I just want to raid a blood bank.”

  I know the feeling.

  I was glad that she was sensitive enough to not ask how I was feeling. It was obvious how I was feeling after what had just happened.

  “Dad sent us,” she said, changing the subject. “He told us to wait with you for the next hour or so, until he’s finished organizing the army and planning the trip. Obviously, I’ll be coming, and Caleb will too.”

  We moved to the control room where there was more seating.

  Rose and Griffin began to share some banter while I looked out toward the dark island. The Shade. Will it ever be my home again the way it once was? Will I ever be able to roam its beautiful beaches and forests again without being a constant threat to our human residents?

  The island looked so peaceful at this early hour. The redwood trees swayed gently in the wind, the glistening ocean waves lapping against the shore.

  Having lived here since I was five, I had taken this place for granted. It was only now that I couldn’t have it that I realized just how much I appreciated my home.

  I caught sight of Shadow in the distance, racing full speed along the beach. Eli was about half a mile behind him, walking alone. I smiled as the dog raced toward the waves and began splashing about as he chased his tail. That dog had the spirit of a puppy with the strength of a rhino. But if it weren’t for him, I didn’t know if I would’ve even seen the light of day—my mother might’ve never escaped the Elder’s grasp.

  I continued watching the dog from my seat, but then stood up as a screeching pierced the quiet morning. Shadow’s strong jaws had clamped around something.

  “A mermaid,” my mother gasped. “He’s caught that mermaid.”

  We all watched in horror as he dragged the creature onto the sand. His jaws were clamped around her left arm. If he let go and bit into another part of her body, there was no way she’d survive the attack.

  Having noticed what had happened, Eli sped up along the beach. He shouted something at the dog, a word I couldn’t recognize, and Shadow instantly let go of the mermaid. As she squirmed across the sand back into the waves, she left a trail of blood behind.

  My father had said that he would ask Ibrahim to get rid of these creatures from our waters, but it appeared that they had both been too preoccupied to see to this yet.

  By some strange coincidence, almost as soon as I thought of the warlock, he appeared before us in the center of the control room. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow and his face looked strained.

  “I can’t find Corrine,” he said, looking around the room at each of us before his eyes settled on me and my mother.

  “What do you mean you can’t find her?” my mother asked.

  “She’s not in the Sanctuary. I gathered together a search party of other witches, vampires and werewolves. We’ve searched every nook and cranny of The Shade looking for her. I even visited the dragons’ mountain quarters to see if she might have gone there for some reason. None of the fire-breathers had seen her. She must’ve left the island.”

  I frowned. “For what?”

  “Your guess is as go
od as mine,” he said.

  “And we have no idea when she’ll be back,” my mother said, her expression mirroring Ibrahim’s. “That means that unless she returns within the next one to two hours, we’re going to have to leave without her. Derek isn’t going to want to hang around.”

  Ibrahim looked anything but happy with the idea, but he nodded. “I hope that she’ll return before then.”

  I was just pondering over where the witch might’ve gone when more people appeared in the room. River and Shayla. I was surprised to see only the two of them. I’d been expecting River’s family to arrive. From the look on their faces, it was clear that something had gone seriously wrong.

  River looked at me with panic in her eyes.

  “The Oasis. They’ve taken my family.”

  Chapter 6: Derek

  Thoughts of the hunters surrounding our island slipped from my mind for the first time in weeks as I went about making preparations to leave for The Oasis.

  I was just making my way around the vampires’ residences, gathering up those who were willing to come, when Sofia came rushing toward me. I was surprised to see her away from our son.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as she reached me. I feared for a moment Ben had gone berserk again and done something horrifying.

  “River and Shayla returned. They went to her apartment in New York, and they also went to Cairo. River couldn’t find her family and she’s convinced that The Oasis has taken them. Also, Ibrahim can’t find Corrine. Did he tell you?”

  Sofia was speaking so fast, I was still processing the first piece of news. “I haven’t bumped into the warlock since we parted ways earlier. What makes River so certain that The Oasis has her family?” I asked, frowning.

  “She saw something strange in her grandfather’s house in Cairo. A rat that appeared to be under some kind of supernatural influence. It left behind a gold coin—identical to those she had been given in The Oasis. She’s extremely shaken by it.”