“Andrew Lacroix. He’s a full vamp, but not yet a vampire lord. He’s the political lord down in Savannah, and he seems to think that he had more of a claim to Atlanta than Shane. Hell, he wants all of Georgia. Don’t ask me why, since Atlanta is enough to handle, and certainly too much for that twit. I wish Shane would just send Banshee and Reaper after him, balls to the wall. Okay, there might be collateral damage, but what can you do? But hey, this is what makes undeath worth living, right?”
“Yes . . . sir,” she said, letting her amused exasperation come through. About that time, a car slowed down. “Great,” she muttered.
“Hey there,” a young Latino man said. Shamira heard talking in the shadows of the car. “Mamacita, you’ve got it goin’ ON!” the driver continued.
Shamira was on the verge of rolling her eyes and walking away when that annoying little voice filtered into her ear. “You’re dressed like a whore,” Henry told her remotely. “Play the part.”
‘Son of a –” She managed a smile. “I’ve got it all and more,” she said, doing the half-closed eyelid thing that the guys from vice always talked about. The kind of thing that working girls did to try and get out of being cited or arrested. ‘Actually, this is kind of fun,’ she decided. She put her hands on the top of their beat-up Cadillac, exposing a generous amount of cleavage.
The driver and his three passengers were looking at her like kids at a nice piece of candy. “I dunno,” one said from the backseat. “Lots of muscles. Sure she’s not a guy?”
That stung home for Shamira, who had dealt with accusations of “manliness” for many years. Without even thinking, she stepped back and pulled up the front of her mini-skirt to expose her black thong. “See any man parts?”
“God no,” another passenger said.
“Hey,” the driver said, “how about a freebie? It’s my birthday! Almost.”
“Hmm,” came Henry’s voice through the headset, “wouldn’t it be interesting –”
Shamira noticed something . . . wrong . . . in the darkness on the other side of the street. One moment she saw nothing, and then it was like someone flipped a switch in her eyes, like staring at one of those hidden images in the posters. Shadows at night weren’t unusual, but these were moving in a most unnatural way. Shadows that didn’t seem to be cast by anything.
“Hey, what’s up?” the driver asked. “You gonna –”
“Cop,” she said quickly. “Just saw him turn the corner back there. Better split.” She actually felt a little disappointed that the game was ending. “Try again in about an hour if you’re still up.”
“Thanks lady!” the driver said, pulling away from the curb.
“I didn’t see any police, ” Henry said. “Are you trying to –”
“Something’s wrong down here,” she said. “I’m seeing shadows move, but I can’t see what’s casting them.”
Henry was suddenly all business. “What do the shadows look like?”
“They’re . . . blobs. I can’t describe them any better, but that’s what they are.”
“Did you bring a weapon?”
“I’ve got my snakewhip belt, and a 9mm in the purse.”
“Silver bullets?”
“Do we have any bullets that aren’t?”
Henry dropped from a nearby rooftop, almost scaring the hell out of Shamira. “Where are they?” he asked.
“Right there,” she said. “Can’t you see them?”
“No,” he replied, then looked at her. “Are you sure –”
“Yeah, I’m . . . fuck, they’re moving.” She cocked her head. The shapes were moving oddly, moving back and forth as if . . . “They’re trying to get over here,” she said. They’re shying away from the light, and . . . why not just fly through the sky? If they’re afraid of light –”
“Crap,” Henry muttered. “Dark Pools. Nasty monsters. They blend completely in the shadows, and they’re basically like big hungry mouths. Shine light directly on them and they dissolve, but people generally can’t detect them until it’s too late. Someone had to have summoned them, but . . . wait, why can YOU see them?”
Shamira shrugged. She looked around and noticed that some things seemed crisper. “Strange. I never noticed it before, but vamps can see stuff better in darkness than in light, can’t they?”
Henry’s eyes slowly opened wide. “No, they can’t. Vamps can see just as well at night as during the day, but not better. Fuck, you’ve got Shadow Sight too! Unfair!”
“Huh?” Shamira felt her response was brilliant.
“Shadow Sight! It’s another shadow Aspect. I can’t be sure right here, but I’m willing to bet you just developed the third of the Shadow Aspects. Damn it, I don’t even have one Aspect!”
“Can we concentrate on the evil buggers trying to eat us?”
Henry was grumbling. He was fascinated by this development, but Shamira had a point. “I’m willing to bet that Lacroix sent them.”
“Why us? Why not Shane?”
“Dark Pools are nasty, but they’re ghostly creatures, and no match for a poltergeist like Jeremiah. They probably just started looking for the nearest members of Shane’s house, and that would be us.” He got an idea. “Stall them. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“Did he just say ‘jiffy’?” she asked of no one in particular. Henry had taken off. When it looked like the Dark Pools were going to try and make their way around, Shamira stepped toward them, careful to stay within the beam of lamppost. She undid her belt, winding the business end around her hand. One of the shadows drifted as close as it could to where she was standing, and she lashed out with the whip. The tip passed harmlessly through it but, when the extending silver tip met concrete on the other side, there was a little bit of a spark. That caused the shadow to jump back, wary of her now. She was so proud of herself that she almost missed a second Dark Pool flowing from the other side when she stepped too close to the edge of the light.
She counted three . . . no, four Dark Pools, and all of them had converged around her location. Before, she could have taken one step away from the light, sank into shadows, and vanished somewhere else, but now she was somewhat trapped. Not that she would run even if she could, since that would leave four hungry demons slinking around downtown Atlanta. She was getting scared, but she was fine as long as the light stayed on. She stared at the pools of total blackness that surrounded her, and suddenly her eyesight . . . popped.
Like earlier, things became crisper, and all the little nuances hidden by darkness became obvious, and she saw all of the Dark Pools. These things that drifted across the ground were simply the mouths of the horde of tiny, chomping demons. Each Dark Pool was a colony of living, sentient appetite. They were called pools, but Shamira saw that their bodies were oceans, the shores of which bent off into some other world or reality in ways that made it hard to look at. Like all oceans, no one drop could kill, but the whole of it would consume, leaving nothing behind.
‘Who the hell could have summoned things like this?’ she thought. Then she heard something that scared her even more — laughter. Somewhere, revelers were out and about, wandering around after getting kicked out of some bar or another. The Pools shifted, but seemed to be keeping their attention on her. But if some innocent wandered by now . . . Shamira had to think fast. She knew they feared the light, but did it hurt them?
She got her answer a moment later as a large black pickup truck came tearing around a corner.
“They still around?” came Henry’s voice in her ear.
“They’ve got me kind of surrounded.”
Henry hit the high-beams and roof lights on the truck, and the area began to glow. Smoke erupted from the Dark Pools, and for three of them there was nowhere to go. Shamira could see that as the edge of the Pools that touched this world burned under the light, they began to lose their hold on this reality, like a suction-cup after the air-tight seal begins to leak. One by one, they popped loose and vanished into whatever world they had come from until only one remained.
It still had enough grip to stay in this world, but not much. It had found refuge from the lights by skulking behind a trash can and a public Post Office drop box. Shamira could practically feel its panic. It was a hunter, not the hunted. It didn’t know how to react. Shamira noticed how close it was to the alley. If it got in there, Henry couldn’t follow it and it would vanish, and who knew what it might eat when it got free. Shamira saw the edge of the creature just before it made a crawl for it, and without thinking she reached out and grabbed it.
Her hands immediately started screaming in agony as the Pool bit into her flesh, but she didn’t let go. She dug her stiletto heels into the ground and pulled backward. The Dark Pool stretched like taffy, some getting pulled into the headlights of the truck. It started to burn, dissolving out of one of Shamira’s hands. Shamira looked at her hand, wondering how badly —
All she saw were little red marks, but no cuts and no bleeding. ‘How is that possible?’ Then it hit her. This was a creature of pure darkness . . . she healed faster the darker it got. Because it was made up of lots of tiny little mouths instead of one big one, it couldn’t do damage to her fast enough to do anything but hurt like hell. ‘Shadow Healing rocks!’ she thought, reaching her hand back into the Pool and dragging the amorphous thing towards the light.
Henry backed up and maneuvered the truck to capture more of the thing in the headlights. Through her hands, Shamira could feel the thing screaming. She felt like a million needles were getting jammed into her hands, but she didn’t let go until she felt its whole weight pulling on her. It was no longer trying to get away; it was falling. Falling back into its own world. She let go and, just like that, it was gone. She fell back on her ass just as a group of college students walked past her location, only half a block away.
‘Thank God they didn’t show up sooner,’ she thought.
“Are you okay?” Henry said, getting out of the truck. He looked at her hands. “What the hell?”
She grinned. She held up her hurt but intact hands and explained her theory about what had happened. He just shook his head in amazement.
“You are . . . good grief,” he muttered, his eyes still wide with amazement.
“What? You sound disappointed the damn things didn’t eat me,” she replied, mildly hurt.