Enshadowed

In the distance, the gates rattled, followed by the sound of chains being pulled free.

“Do you seriously expect me to believe anything you say?” Isobel asked him.

“I told you what I had to,” he said. “To protect this world. Your world.”

“Did you?” Isobel took a step back and then another. The speed of her heart, already racing, tripled when she saw him match her movements. “Is that what happened with Edgar, too?” she continued, her eyes darting to the hilt of one of his swords as it flashed silver within the shadowy folds of his cloak. “Did you do what you had to when he was calling out for you, begging for your help?”

He stopped midstep, though his expression remained unchanged.

“You said he was your friend,” she went on. “And I guess now you’re going to try to tell me that wasn’t a lie either? I saw what happened in the hospital. I know what you did.” She continued to move as she spoke, putting more and more distance between them. She kept her eyes level on him. “Whatever you are . . . whatever monster it is you’ve become . . . you should know that it is everything you deserve to be.”

With that, Isobel turned, rushing headlong for the open tomb.

Somewhere far off, getting closer, she heard the wail of sirens. People yelling. Iron hinges groaning.

“Stop!” Reynolds shouted.

She ran toward the tomb, the ground racing beneath her feet. She felt as if she was rushing straight into her own grave, about to catapult herself into the yawning jaws of death itself.

“Isobel!”

She could sense him just behind her—inches away.

On the ground, she saw his shadow gaining on hers, then falling away the moment before something fast and strong—a hand—caught her around the ankle. She tripped forward and fell flat onto her stomach, the air bursting out of her lungs as the frozen snow soaked through her clothes.

Isobel groped for the archway, for anything to grab hold of. Her fingernails scraped over the stone threshold as she felt herself being drawn backward.

“No!” she shouted.

Twisting onto her side, Isobel saw him behind her, on his knees in the snow, one hand fixed like a manacle around her ankle. She pulled up the knee of her free leg, preparing to kick him, but missed when he yanked her toward him. Cringing, she cried out, gritting her teeth as the hardened, gravel-coated earth grated against her side. Then, as though she were nothing more than a rag doll, Reynolds drew her to her knees before him, bringing her to face him.

He held her by her shoulders and, shaking her once, forced her eyes to meet with his.

“Listen to me,” he said. “If you cross that barrier, you will die! And if you die while bodily within that realm, you will become like the rest of us. The same soulless class of monster you have so ardently accused me of being!”

She only half heard these words, her attention drawn to the sudden movement that came from behind Poe’s old grave marker. A familiar figure, visible over one of Reynolds’s black-clad shoulders, rose up from behind the monument, her face luminous as a ghost’s.

Gwen.

“Heed my words, Isobel—”

Isobel looked quickly back to Reynolds as Gwen made her approach, hurrying toward them. Stooping, she gathered the hem of his cloak and then, just as he turned to look, Gwen pulled the fabric taut, tossing it over his head as though bagging a live rabbit.

“Heed this!” she growled as she locked her twiggy arms around Reynolds’s neck in a choke hold, clamping the cloak into place over his head.

Reynolds released Isobel at once and his hands rushed to grip Gwen’s arms. Gwen did her best to hold fast, clutching him tighter. Her eyes met with Isobel’s, glasses knocked askew.

“Go!” she yelled.

Isobel scrambled to her feet. She hurried toward the tomb door even as Reynolds’s cries for her to stop continued. At first they came muffled, distorted by the fabric of the cloak. Then, after a high-pitched shriek from Gwen, his shouting became suddenly clear again.

Isobel reached the darkness of the doorway, not bothering to slow down as she shot through to the other side. She gasped as her body passed beyond what felt like an invisible screen of static electricity. Her limbs became numbed as the sound of her footsteps echoed on the stone floor.

Whirling, she grabbed hold of the slab that lay partially shifted aside from the open archway. She shoved at it, and to her amazement, the door began to move, the thick stone grinding its way shut, following the command of her slightest push.

Through the shrinking wedge of dim light, she could see the cemetery filling with people. The man who had watched from the church. Police officers, hands poised on their holstered guns. And Gwen sitting nearby, huddled against one of the gravestones, cradling an arm against her chest. Tears streaked her face, but her figure soon became eclipsed by another.