Disclaimer: Not mine, all L.J. Smith's.




The Resurrection


Part 3



There was a familiar resistance as she passed over the threshold and stumbled her way through to the darkness beyond. Abruptly, the door behind her slammed shut, leaving her surrounded by utter black. Groping blindly and finding nothing but empty space, Jenny felt panic rising in her throat as long moments passed and still light refused to appear.

Alone and in the dark and on the Shadow Men's turf. 'Oh god, oh god, oh god,' her mind furiously chanted. 'I'm trapped. I'm trapped and I'll never get out.' The sound of her own harsh breathing, the furiously shallow intake of air, pounded in her ears, and she realized that she was in danger of hyperventilating. There was not way in hell she was going to risk fainting in this place.

She inhaled deeply, letting out a shuddering sigh before repeating the process over several times. Finally, the panic subsided, and the fear was manageable, not the blinding—so to speak—consuming tempest it had been escalating into. And in the process of reclaiming control she had begun to notice something peculiar. As her fear lessened, the room grew steadily less dark. At first she cast it off as a trick of the imagination, the by-product of standing too long in the utter darkness, but after a while it became quite evident such was not the case.

By the time that her heartbeat had returned to a vaguely normal, and at least safe, rate, there was actually enough light for her to make out her surroundings. And as the light appeared, her fear lessened, working in a cyclic nature that fed off itself.

Of course, it had very nearly been the other way around.

Jenny shuddered at the realization, but refused to be drawn back into such thoughts, instead choosing to examine the setting.

She stood in the center of an enormous rocky cavern, with ceilings so high they almost seemed to disappear into the darkness that still lingered. There was only the vaguest impression that they were actually there, and that this place, whatever it was, didn't go on forever, but was finite in its dimensions. The circumference of the cavern—for it did appear to be of a circular shape—was also great, but not nearly so much as the height.

The light that had saved her didn't appear to have any direct source, which was unusual considering there were no openings through which it might have leaked in. Rather, it appeared to emanate from the center, where she currently stood, and fade as it moved out towards the walls.

The place was empty, deserted, not a single break along its rocky floor. In the distance, she could just barely make out an exit, a darkening tunnel that led away. And at the other end, directly opposite to the first, was another. An entrance and an exit, she realized. But which was which?

The door she had come through had disappeared, as she knew it would, and as it had the last time she had dared to enter the Shadow World. There as no escape now, no going back. Only forward.

It was very cold in the cavern and Jenny shivered despite her thick sweater. But a tremble of a different sort threatened to consume her when she realized that the temperature was progressively dropping, and a terrifyingly familiar white mist was making its way to her from the two tunnels. Not just from the tunnels, but from all directions, nonexistent entrance points allowing it to seep in, a dense, twirling, seething mass of essence.

Black mixed with white, shadows with ice, a blinding brightness blending into darkness. And that smell, a combination of decay and brimstone and the rotting scent of spoiled meat; it burned her nostrils. Jenny's eyes tore, the threatening tears blinding her, though she couldn't say whether they were due to the assault on her senses, or the utter terror that was quickly overtaking her. Alone this time, without her friends—who couldn't have helped her anyway, but would have been of some comfort nonetheless—on her own to face the Shadow Men.

The air itself seemed to hiss around her. "Faaamishhshhed…" Not so much a word as a constant state of existence. The Shadow Men were always hungry, always wanting more. And they had an awful tendency to play with their food. She didn't have to look to know that frost was forming on whatever surface available, which was rather limited to the ground below her feet and to her. The white powder was already soaking through her hair and her sweater as the heat of her body melted it, causing it to dampen the material it contacted.

The white mist reached out, alternating between deceptively gentle, insistent tendrils and lashing whips that hit Jenny's exposed skin with all the intensity of the arctic wind. Her long honey-colored hair flew about her face, stinging as it met her flesh.

And it kept getting brighter, the light overwhelming her sight until she could see nothing beyond its whiteness. 'Snow-blind,' the thought was realized within her frantic mind. 'It's like being snow-blind.'

And cold, so cold. Painfully cold, and as each whip of air hit her, she wanted to scream at the agony. She wanted to cower in fear, fall to the ground and wish she had never opened the portal; that she had listened to Dee, stayed in her world. That she had listened to her mother and married Tom. Lived a plain, flavorless, boring existence that had nothing to do with the Shadow Men.

And finally she did scream. But not the wordless, terror-filled shriek of one who has seen into the yawning entrance to hell and realized there is no escaping it.

She screamed with purpose; a single word and a command.

"Algiz!"

Her hand clutched at an object previously hidden beneath her sweater, where it hung from a chain around her neck. She clutched it with such intensity that her knuckles were bone-white in their hold, painful just to look at. She clutched it as if her life depended on it.

And suddenly, it all stopped.

No, actually, it didn't stop; it continued on around her, while she alone remained untouched. The howling winds sounded faded now, almost as if heard from a distance, and their fierce assault no longer afflicted her body. The white-black mist shifted about her, but an invisible line of separation held it from her as it swirled impotently, a forbidding halo surrounding her body.

Then the bright whiteness of it too faded, allowing her vision to return gradually. In her tight grip the wooden pendant seemed to grind into her bones, its purpose served and the gesture unnecessary, but still she held on in fear what letting go might mean.

The dark mist remained, gathering and forming into discernable shapes. Nightmarish shapes, ones that had haunted her dreams—both waking and those that came at night—forcing her to consciousness, drenched in cold sweat and throat ready to burst in unvoiced screams. Shapes that had haunted all of them, her friends who had come into the Shadow World with her, but none so much as Jenny. For she alone had almost lost herself—twice—to them, the Shadow Men. Once, in her grandfather's basement, at the age of five, and a trade, him for her, was all that saved her. And then again, twelve years later when she had robbed the Shadow Men of their "prey" and another exchange had been made. An exchange that had resulted in the wrong she had finally come to right.

That thought was enough to bring Jenny back to her senses, push aside the terrifying thoughts that that brushed against her mind like butterfly wings of despair.

Her hand eased in its grip, letting the pendant fall to rest against her sweater, though her heart still pounded loudly in her ears, and the fact that she could see them now, clearly, did nothing to help ease it. Their hideous, deformed bodies, their cruel, ravenous eyes, and the eternal hunger so strong, it was a presence in itself.

It was cold still, within the cavern, but it was a sufferable cold, and one she knew existed more in her head than outside her body.

Then one tall figure stepped forward, out of the dissipating mist, and she recognized it.

Crocodile eyes, and though she could not see them right now, fingers scaled with skin like a dinosaur's. Fingers of the hand that had cut through Julian's runestave and taken him from her. The one that had voiced their demand for blood, an exchange for the prey she had released. Blood, any blood, even that of their own when the youngest Shadow Man refused to sacrifice her.

And something in those dark, unfathomable, malevolent depths told her that it recognized her too. But she wasn't surprised. After all, if she hadn't forgotten, how could she expect any less of a creature to whom eight years was but an infinitesimal speck on the fabric of eternity?

It spoke, in a voice shockingly lovely and like distant wind chimes of ice, grotesque in its beauty, coming from the mouth of something so monstrous. "You have pierced the veil between the worlds. For this, you should be ours."

Voices murmured their agreement, some beautiful, some hideous, ranging from one spectrum to the other, in a rainbow of sound. Together they produced a harmony utterly frightening to her ears.

"To do with as we please," added a whispering voice like snow blowing. It faded out so gradually, extending the word 'please' so she couldn't quite define when it finished speaking, just as she couldn't determine which of the creatures to whom the voice belonged.

"But you come yielding a power unknown to you," this voice like a brass gong. And she recognized it too as it came forward to speak. Eyes pure red, like blood, tusk-like teeth that weren't yet visible and fingers like a gorilla's. Large, black, and padded; she had lain her own hand in it once, when she had been prepared to go with the Shadow Men, the price to pay for setting free her grandfather and the two pitiable boys who had entered Julian's game and unleashed dark powers beyond their grasp.

And then Julian had knocked them apart, refusing to see her damned as so many before her had been. Taking her place instead.

Finally, Jenny found her voice, her mind part occupied by images of frost-blond hair and eyes of liquid cobalt, and a boy who was not a boy, but a creature so ageless that time meant nothing to him but the fulfillment of an inevitable curse.

Sheer determination had brought her this far, and she wasn't going to give up now. Not when she was so close.

"Not so unknown," she replied, only a slight tremor running through her words. "I've been doing my homework."

"But for what purpose?" the first one inquired, slight lilt to the chimes as the inscrutable black eyes peered at her.

A scuttling movement caught her eye, and the ancient gray, withered fetus she remembered from their last confrontation came forward. "For what pleasure would you pay the price of pain?" Its tiger-eyes seized her own and it giggled maniacally, not waiting for her answer before it shuffled back from whence it'd come.

"What do you seek?" a murky voice, thick like sludge, prodded. Her gaze shifted to the side, to her right, the direction from which the latest voice had come.

They all but surrounded her, leaving only the space at her back empty space, since none had chosen to stand behind her, and for that she was grateful. Not that it mattered, for the rune she had called up, Algiz—rune of protection and defense—held an invisible shield about her. A sphere of safety, which she surmised was about four feet in radius, impenetrable so long as she held it. Though how long that would be, she had no idea.

In theory, it should last until she no longer had the strength to enforce it, but she had never before had the chance to test her stamina. And especially never against an opposing force… because she could feel them now, the Shadow Men, searching for a weakness in her defense, waiting for the moment when she let down her guard and they could strike.

She had indeed done her homework, had practiced invoking the ancient runes, to build confidence and precision. But she was afraid, and fear was making her faith waiver when she needed it to be most strong. So she had to do this quickly, before they wore her down, or before they penetrated her barrier. Spell it out, no hesitation.

"A game."

Because Julian had told her, not so directly, but in implications—when he spoke of Perthro, rune of gambling and divination—that whatever else, the Shadow Men played by the rules.

"For a prize."

And when they lost, they kept to their agreements, though she got the feeling that they rarely ever lost.

Crocodile eyes inclined its head, and she could almost, almost sense a smile as it regarded her. It found her amusing, she could see. The prey that had barely escaped with her life, twice, and voluntarily came back for more.

"What do you want? You know what we want."

It was pleased; it certainly was, though still it did not display that pleasure openly. Others were not so restrained. The one with the blood red eyes was grinning plainly, its tusk-like teeth bared. Those that did not possess the tanned-leather faces that made the expression impossible, responded similarly.

Moment of truth. Naming of the price.

Jenny gave an answering grin, forcing herself to reply with a confidence she did not feel. "A runestave. With a name carved back in it. Julian's."

The Shadow Men were shocked. She could feel their surprise, almost taste it in the air, under the overpowering flavors of brimstone and decay.

The girl with the golden hair and determined gaze the color of cypress trees, who emanated light in her every movement, had caught the eye and the heart—something hereto thought nonexistent—of the youngest of their kind… this girl had shocked them.

They had never understood the nature of Julian's infatuation. In their eyes, humans were nothing more than prey, to be hunted and slain and devoured slowly. But the youngest of the Shadow Men had defied this cycle, seeking the girl for reasons beyond them, watching and wanting and protecting her, and always waiting.

The waiting they could understand, and the wanting too. And watching, that was what they did, from the shadows, off in the corner or far in the back, hunters of the night. But the protecting they could never comprehend.

They had laughed at him, mocked his love, which was an anomaly in itself. Love that should not exist, emotions he should not be capable of. They had watched him make his move, witnessed as he tried to win her over and failed, and failed, and failed yet again. She would not be his, and they expected him to realize this, to return to their ways. Hunt the prey, capture it, play for a while, and then kill it.

Yet he never learned, and even in the end he would have seen her go. But she had interfered with what was theirs and her actions, her mercy, had signed her over. As it should have been, for he would not have had her anyway, and prey like that was never meant to escape. Something so sweet, so pure, such light… it was meant to be savored, bit by bit, piece by piece.

Then he had done the unthinkable. He had given up his place for her. Given up immortality and power unimaginable to extend the pathetic existence of a creature whose life could not last beyond the blink of an eye. For a mortal, a human, the prey.

But he had done it, and they had had to let the prey go because they no longer held the claim. They missed their fun but they had to abide by the rules. So they returned to the shadows to wait, wait for the next sweet, tasty morsel to stumble their way.

And then the prey returned.

They said he was a fool for loving her. They said she would never love him back. But what did the Shadow Men know about love?


TBC