There were half a dozen people in the Abbey Room already. Two middle-aged women-European tourists by the look of them-huddled together on a bench, holding each other as though cowering in fear. A sixtyish Asian man in a business suit stood in the center of the room, facing Jim and the others as they rushed in. A young couple, perhaps graduate students, flanked the far door as if they were guarding it.
The sixth person was a dead security guard. He lay on the marble not far from the Asian man, a pool of blood beneath him.
Sally stopped short, glancing anxiously around, and the rest of them followed suit. “I should have realized…,” Sally said. “I sensed them, but I didn’t see them. I never thought she’d risk it.”
“Sally?” Jim said warily.
“What the hell is this?” Trix asked.
Jim glanced back the way they’d come and saw the woman and the orange-haired kid from downstairs follow them into the room. The old man who had caught his eye entered a moment later, still staring at Jim. “Who are they, Sally?” Jim asked.
“Not ‘who,’ “Sally said. “But ‘what’? They’re Shadow Men.”
“But they look normal,” Trix whispered, glancing at Anne and Jennifer, the five of them clustering together as the strangers began to close in on them. Only the two terrified women on the bench did not rise-they were ordinary people, trapped here in the midst of the horror.
“They haven’t been changed completely yet,” Jim told her, glancing at Sally to confirm his suspicion.
Sally nodded. “They’re not dead yet.”
The white-haired Asian man had remained in the center of the room, but now he glanced at the others, and the strangers all paused. Jim blinked, thinking his vision had begun to blur, but it was the strangers that were blurring. The orange-haired teen’s shadow seemed to separate from him, wavering just a few inches to one side like a ghostly conjoined twin. The others all shuddered as the same transformation went through them. Part human and part wraith, they were bodies with living shadows.
One of the women on the bench screamed; the other sobbed hysterically.
Jennifer grabbed Jim’s arm. “What do we do?”
Jim glanced at Trix. “We fight.”
“What?” Trix asked.
Jim grinned, all his anger and fear swelling up inside him, fists clenching. “They’re solid, Trixie. Let’s get Holly. And if they try to stop us, kick the shit out of them.”
“Jim…,” Anne said.
Sally nodded, reached out, and gave Jim a shove toward the door at the far end of the room. “Go!” she shouted.
Even as her voice echoed off the walls, the Asian man made a single gesture, and the Half Shadows attacked.
The Light of a Fading Star
They were inhumanly fast.
Trix swung a fist at the redheaded kid, but he darted past her blow and grabbed her wrist. He started dragging her toward the wall that separated the Abbey Room from the Reflection Room. She tried to fight her way free, but now he had her by both wrists, and he was strong. She planted her feet, but the soles of her shoes slid across the marble floor.
“No!” Anne shouted. “Let her go!” But as she launched herself at Trix and the redhead, the terror of losing her lover twice in a lifetime clearly making her crazed, the woman who’d come in with the teenager grabbed the back of her neck with one splayed hand and hurled Anne at the ground. Her head struck marble and she cried out. For a second, Trix feared the worst, but then Anne scrambled away from the Half Shadow, who stalked her across the room.
Scuffles and shouts echoed all around. The old man who’d entered last seemed focused on Jim, as did the couple who had been guarding the door to the Reflection Room. Jennifer stood in front of Sally as though to protect her, which seemed strange, considering the girl had more ability to fight back than any of them. The screaming woman had gone silent with fear, and now she got her sobbing friend up from the bench. With one last glance at the dead security guard, they ran for the exit.
The well-dressed man darted toward them, trailing his Shadow Twin like a comet’s tail. He grabbed the sobbing woman and drove her head into the wall so hard that her skull cracked, loud as a gunshot, and she slid to the floor, dead. The other woman began screaming again, and she fought him, trying to claw his face and then his Shadow self.
Terror turned Trix’s blood to ice. The sobbing woman had died in an instant. They didn’t want witnesses, didn’t want anyone to come and help, and that told her a great deal. They could be hurt. They could be beaten. And they didn’t have any backup.
She shot out a leg, tripped the redheaded kid, and rode him down as he fell. His head bounced off the floor, and she grabbed hold of his ears and started slamming his skull against the marble tile. Someone was screaming, shrill and hysterical, and only when she bared her teeth as she fought his efforts to rise-and the screaming ceased-did she realize it had been her all along.
His orange hair was dark and wet now, and it left bright crimson smears on the tile. His eyes were going out of focus. But then he reached up and struck her in the stomach, took her wrists, and broke her grip. He tossed her away and she hit hard. Trix scrambled up and saw that his Shadow Twin hung even farther out of him. Had it been the Shadow’s hands on her, or the human boy’s? Did it matter?
He tried to rise but stumbled and hit the floor, too disoriented to attack her.
Jennifer screamed for Jim.
Trix looked up and saw the Asian man looming over Jennifer. He had a fistful of her pretty hair, and in that moment, she was Jenny. Or she might as well have been. Trix ran for her, only to see Sally behind her, drawing symbols on the floor in what must be the girl’s own blood. Whatever Sally was up to, Trix knew she had to protect her until it was done.
But then Anne screamed and Trix twisted around to see the buxom woman, Shadow Twin almost entirely outside her flesh, dragging Anne across the floor by one ankle. The thing was taking her toward the Reflection Room, or at least toward that door or wall, just as the redhead had tried to take Trix. There was something to be made of that-something obvious that Trix just wasn’t getting-but she didn’t have the luxury of thinking.
This chaos would end with them all dead, unless the young Oracle could do something to help them.
Jim saw Trix run past, headed for the door to the Reflection Room, and he prayed she would get through that door, that she would get to Holly. Right now he had trouble of his own. As Trix ran by, the dapper businessman Jim had first seen down in the reading room reached for her and missed, despite his unnatural speed. It gave Jim an instant to act. The other two, the young couple, were grappling with him, trying to stop him from getting to the Oracle.
“Sally!” Jim shouted. “Whatever you’re going to do-”
He didn’t get to finish. The old businessman punched him in the mouth and Jim reeled backward, breaking the grip of one of the two who still held him. He lunged toward the wall, but what he wanted leaned against it-a wooden captain’s chair that had, like the benches, been placed there for older patrons to rest on while touring the library.
Gritting his teeth against its weight, he swung the chair with all the strength he could muster, smashing it into the face and chest of the thing still holding him. The young man let go, flailing as he stumbled back. Blood spurted from his broken nose and dripped down his chin as he sprawled to the floor. He lay with his eyes closed, unconscious and broken, but the shadow part of him created by his time lost in the In-Between-before Veronica had fished him out to make him do her bidding-remained awake, and enraged. It tried to pull itself fully out of him, but it was tethered within him, was him, in some fundamental way.