Page 40 of Lion's Share
I hurried into the house and slammed the door behind me, then locked both the latch and the deadbolt. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d done that, but I wasn’t taking any chances…although I had the creeping worry that a creature of shadow like the ones I’d just seen might not have to worry about deadbolts and locks and could simply seep its way past the doorjamb.
A shudder went through me, and then I realized the house was utterly dark. I’d left the light over the sink on before I left, but it was off now, as well as the clocks on the oven and microwave.
It sure looked as if the arrival of those shadow creatures must have been accompanied by a massive electromagnetic burst.
Shit.
I hurried into the living room and scooped up my purse so I could pull out my cell phone. Sure enough, all the bars were missing, and when I put it up to my ear, I got an automated, “All circuits are busy. Please try again later” message.
Great. It seemed that whatever portal those shadow-things had used to get here…because I knew they couldn’t be of this earth…must have sent out an enormous shockwave, enough to knock out the electricity and the town’s one cell tower. Normally, everything would have already come back online by now, but it definitely didn’t look as if the power had any intention of returning any time soon.
But I knew the house well enough that the darkness was no real impediment. I went over to the little cabinet in the mudroom where we kept various odds and ends and fished out the flashlight my grandmother always kept there. Yes, I had a bigger one I used for my outings with Ben in the woods, but it was currently in one of the drawers of the table near the front door, and this was a lot closer.
I turned on the flashlight and used its illumination to get out the long-handled lighter from the kitchen drawer where it lived, and headed into the dining room to light the candles on the table. Those gave enough light for me to go into the living room and get the candles that sat on top of the bookcases going, along with my favorite three-wick from Bath and Bodyworks, the cinnamon-spiced vanilla one that smelled absolutely divine.
Just as I was putting down the lighter, someone knocked at the front door. “Sidney? Are you okay?”
Ben’s voice.
Well, I was doing much better now that he was here. I’d already had the idea in my head that I would go over to his place once I was done getting my house sufficiently lit up, although I hadn’t much liked the idea of making my way across town armed with only a flashlight when one of those…things…was still prowling around out there.
At once, I hurried over to the door and opened it. He looked just fine, if a bit worried.
“So much for your YouTube live, I guess,” I said as I ushered him inside and then shut the door.
That quip made him smile faintly. “We were in the middle of wrapping it up, so the outage didn’t cause too much of a problem. Or at least, I have to assume it didn’t. With the phones dead, I didn’t have any way to reach out to Trent and let him know I was okay, but that Silver Hollow had just had another power outage.” Hazel eyes scanned my face briefly, and he added, “But this feels like something more.”
“I’m pretty sure it is,” I replied, then paused to take a steadying breath. “We have a lot to talk about.”
His brows lifted. “What happened?”
I guided him over to the sofa. “Want some water? This might take a while.”
Again, he looked almost puzzled, but he only said, “Sure, that would be great.”
I went into the kitchen, got out the water from the fridge, and then put the pitcher back inside and quickly closed the refrigerator door. Even in July, it rarely got hot here in Silver Hollow, but I didn’t want to waste any more of the coolness inside the fridge than necessary when I didn’t know how long the power would be out this time.
“So,” Ben said as I settled myself next to him on the couch, “what’s going on? Beyond the usual power outages, that is.”
I glanced around the candlelit room. “I’m not sure this one is ‘usual.’”
His mouth tightened for a second or two. “No, I guess not. So…what caused this particular surge?”
Where to even start? Somewhere near the beginning, I supposed, so I told him as best I could, words sometimes tumbling over one another, how I’d met the griffin in the forest and somehow managed to communicate with it, how it offered some sort of protection and mentioned the word “shadow,” just like my mother’s note did.
“I still couldn’t figure out what was going on,” I concluded. “But then when I saw those shadow wolves or whatever they were, I realized that was what my mother — and the griffin — must have been trying to warn me about.”
Ben went very still, although I noticed how his gaze was fixed on the window in the dining room, which faced eastward, toward the forest.
“Shadow stalkers,” he murmured, and I sent him a startled glance.
“You know what those things are?” I demanded.
Although he didn’t look exactly sheepish, something about his expression still seemed almost embarrassed. “‘Know’ is kind of a strong word. I’ve come across references in a few places while I was researching chupacabras, comments here and there where people talked about some kind of shadow wolves that appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared just as suddenly. Someone called them shadow stalkers once, so that term has sort of stuck in my brain.”
It definitely sounded scary enough, although I thought “shadow wolves” wasn’t exactly the sort of phrase to inspire confidence, either. “What do they do?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Ben replied. “There were a couple of places where people mentioned they attacked livestock, but that could have been ordinary wolves, not shadow stalkers. They don’t like light, from what I read, so your instinct to light all these candles was a good one.”
