I kissed Grayson’s cheek. “Okay, come on. You can’t change your mind once it starts. And I won’t be able to help you, but it’ll be okay after.”
Levi looked a little green. “Good luck.”
Malcolm walked over to him. “Sorry about that. I know I should keep my mouth shut. It’s never been my strong suit.”
“Yeah, well, I want to punch you. Only this time you happened to be right. Give me the baby.” He extended his hand. “Pain-in-the-ass stepfather.”
Malcolm grinned. The days of them arguing endlessly might be behind them. At least some of the time they seemed to be able to communicate like this. “We need to find you a girlfriend.”
“Pickings seem a little slim where I’m currently living. Maybe someday, when I’m back where there are actually women.” He took Abbi from Malcolm’s arms. “Good luck everyone. See you later.”
I wanted to send Grayson with him. Only I didn’t. Somehow, someway I had to let this boy become who he was meant to be. He’d survived a demon possession, made it through the ordeal, and hadn’t lost himself. Most people didn’t manage. He’d come back from it.
I scooped up the dirt. When Chase held it earlier, the wind had seemingly come out of nowhere, but there were no accidents in this place. I closed my eyes and sent my thoughts to the wind. Malcolm stood next to me, placing his hand on my shoulder. His power called to mine, and somehow we both summoned the wind. The dirt flew up into the air, and we breathed it in. I opened my lids to look at Grayson. He was with us. He’d get through this.
Unless I’d made a terrible mistake.
Chapter Six
I touched the mean man’s arm. “Please don’t be mad.”
“We’re not.” The middle one answered. “Get to it.”
“Do you want to fight monsters with us?”
I really didn’t. I didn’t like monsters. I saw too many of them. They were everywhere. One had been attacking Malcolm for so long that it nearly killed him. My mom had made it go away. “What about Malcolm?”
The three men looked at each other. “You want him?”
“I do.” In that second I wanted him more than anything in the whole world, more even than anything I’d ever hoped for on Christmas morning.
“That can be arranged.”
I gasped and covered my mouth. Wait a minute. I knew this moment. I remembered it. Somehow, someway, this kept happening. I had been here before, at least twice. Why was that? I was just a little girl. I was … no, I was a grown woman trying to solve a problem. We had travelled back in time using sand. Memory sand.
We had a big problem, and the Others were gone. They’d left me without information we needed. Everything had gone to hell.
I grabbed Michael’s arm. “Please help me, Michael.”
He stared down at my hand as though it was a foreign object he’d never seen. “Did one of you tell her my name?”
“When would we have done that?” Rafael spoke from where he remained by the wall. “How do you know his name, Kendall?”
I stared up at Rafael. “This may or may not make any sense to you, and I’m not sure if I have enough time to really explain it. But I am inhabiting my childhood mind temporarily. I used some sand from the place where you’re about to take me. You never let us back to the sand. It’s not until after you are gone we discover it. I can prove it. You’re old beings, but you’ll never tell us how old. You watched me in utero. Watched my mother. My grandmother. You lost your own world, and each one of you will sacrifice yourself for us over time. For me, really. I don’t deserve it, but you will.”
Rafael walked toward me. “This is incredible. We’ve never used the sand ourselves. Couldn’t make it work.”
“We need help. You gave me knowledge, shoved it in my head, but I’ve never been able to use it. We’ve shut the portals, but they’re opening. And The Master is running around on Earth creating havoc. This is the end. All or nothing. Leave me something. Leave it in one of the cabins to find. Don’t ever tell me. I’ll only remember I asked you for it when I come back from here.”
Michael’s jaw dropped. I knew from experience how rarely his stupefaction happened. “What help do you need?”
“I need to know how to manage the portals. What do I do about the fact that they keep coming?”
* * *
I collapsed, gasping for air. My thoughts turned to Grayson. Who needed air if my kid wasn’t okay? I crawled over to him and pulled him into my arms. He held on to me, gasping. Together, we found our way back to normal breathing again. Malcolm scooted to our side. “Everyone okay?”
Grayson nodded vigorously. “I was able to talk to grandma.”
“You were?” Malcolm and I asked him at the same time. This was Grayson’s first time going back, and he’d managed to speak to my mother?
“It was painful at first, but I was sitting at the dining room table, and she was there. I pushed out the words, and she listened.”
He threw his arms around my waist. “She said to tell you something. There’s nothing in your whole life you haven’t succeeded at. She wants you to remember what she once told you about human nature. It will apply here, too.”
I wished I could have seen one or both of my parents, and unfortunately, I had no idea what she wanted me to remember. I’d had too many memories at this point. Some were going to get lost in the fray. “Did she say why I needed to remember?”
“No. It took a little time to convince her I wasn’t cuckoo.” Grayson stood. He recovered far swifter than I did from being thrown around through time.
Block stumbled over to us and sat down. “I had a talk with my father, which was in some ways cathartic but not helpful to our current circumstances.”
One-by-one, our friends sat in a circle around us. I didn’t know if my talk with Michael had gotten us any answers or not. I wasn’t even sure if he’d believed me. Or if he had, perhaps he hadn’t cared to assist us. I’d get up and look around to see if anything had changed. Maybe there was some hidden help somewhere in his cabin.
He’d never told me anything as a child to answer my question, not that I could remember anyway. My years in Shadow Dimension had really screwed with my mind. Maybe no one was meant to live as long or as many ways as I had. Still, I would do my best before I moved on.
I wouldn’t leave those I loved with The Master running around. Not if I could help it. If I didn’t make it, at least they would be safe. It was the best I could do for them, short of surviving myself. At this point, I wasn’t certain how many lives I had left.
We gathered, and with Grayson on my left and Malcolm on my right, I listened to their stories. They all had one. Most of them had seen old relatives with little help. Malcolm claimed to be unable to speak to anyone. But he lied.
I could always tell, and he knew, which at least meant he was waiting to share whatever he’d experienced. He had to expect me to ask him about it. Later.
When it was my turn, I had to admit my problem. “I did speak to Michael. But I don’t know if he believed me. I have no memory of him bringing up The Master. Do any of you?”
Replies of “No” filled the area, which left me with no choice. I stood. It was time to go look to see if Michael had left us any information.
Malcolm grabbed my arm. “They might not have believed you, or maybe there were no answers. I’m afraid I have to state the obvious. If they knew how to do it, they would have done so when the shadows came after their world.”
He made a good point. “Millions of years passed between the time they failed and when they brought us in. They have to have learned something.”
“Not necessarily.” His eyes sparked with anger. “Maybe they knew jack shit. Do you know everything you tell the kids? Sorry, Grayson. Hope you’ve already figured this out, but about half the time with parenting, the parents in question are actually clueless. They had a great idea. Bring us in. Maybe we’d be better than they were.”
I raged an internal war against my need to snap
at him. It was easy to lose it with Malcolm. Half of our relationship was one of us yelling at the other, being annoyed with the other, or ignoring the other in annoyance. Still, I kept my annoyance buried. We had an audience that included Grayson, and no one needed to watch us vent our spleens at this current moment.
I took a deep breath. “What did you have in mind, then? Give up? Assume there’s no answer?”
“Why not?” He rubbed his forehead. “We can’t win. So let’s stay here. Leave it alone. Raise the kids. Have a life. Here. The shadows aren’t here. We bring the people we love—we mostly have. And we go on with our lives. We agreed to something where the terms were never fully explained and we were too young to know better. We say no more. We tried. Why do we keep having to die?”
Who was this? I turned my head to the side. Behind me, the others must have heard the same thing. Malcolm had never run from a fight in his life; by contrast, he charged in, sometimes heedless of the danger.
Fatherhood wouldn’t have made him cowardly. He’d dragged me out of the Shadow Dimension with no consideration for his own safety in doing so.
“Who are you?”
He looked away. “Shit.”
“Malcolm didn’t come back from our little escapade into the past. At least not yet. Who are you?”
Block was suddenly on one side of me with Henry on the other. Grayson was whisked out of reach, I didn’t know by whom, but I was grateful for the move. Who had taken over Malcolm and come back here to stop us in our tracks?
The person wearing my love’s body pointed at me. “You asked me for help. For the longest time I didn’t believe you. Then Malcolm came back. I heard it again. Okay, it took me a long time to believe. But I did. If you’re in this situation, then it’s pointless. Stay here. Live a life.”
Bullshit. “You’re not Michael. He and I had spent weeks alone here. He could have said that at any point. I don’t believe it.” I raised my hand. “Try again. Or face my power. I can make you talk.”
He leaned toward me. “Could you? This is Malcolm’s body. I know its been used before. As a child, the demons couldn’t stay out of him. But now? Imagine how powerful I must be to get past the blocks he used. Imagine what I could do to him. How powerful must I be to keep him asleep? The great Malcolm Fallon, the one who was supposed to beat us all.”
Block placed a hand on the center of my back. “Don’t panic. If anyone survives this, it’s Malcolm”
“You are The Master himself, aren’t you?” Henry spoke, which was great because I wasn’t sure at that moment I could have managed to form words.
Malcolm had been possessed. He’d gotten taken as a child during our time walk and then—what?—the shadow had travelled backwards with Malcolm and continued to have him here. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen Malcolm possessed. It was, if I remembered correctly, the fourth.
He’d had three demons attached to him when my mother and father arrived to look into his case all those years ago. In my first life.
My love had been a skinny, ten-year-old boy the foster system didn’t know how to handle. How could they? They had no idea his night terrors, rages, and shaking episodes were not medical, emotional, mental, or plain stubbornness—the latter being what his last foster mother had thought.
He’d survived what few others could, a constant onslaught of pain by the paranormal out to kill him before he’d grown up and gained the strength to get rid of them. In the end, a bullet had done the trick.
The Master snickered. “What are you going to do, Kendall? You couldn’t kill Levi. Can you take out Malcolm?”
I hadn’t had to kill Levi. He’d lived, somehow, and mostly thanks to Ross, who had gone with Chase to get the Phoenix. Timing was everything. I could have used both of them right then. My hands tingled, power inside of me ready to be used. I kept my mouth shut. Nothing would be said or done in a rush. Seconds might feel like hours, but that’s all they were, seconds.
There was time to decide what to do.
“Mom,” Grayson called out, and I winced. I wished he didn’t have to see this. Malcolm had saved Grayson from this kind of thing. They had a special relationship. “You can’t leave him like this. It hurts. He can hear us. I know he can.”
Grayson had been possessed by a demon; it was a different situation than this. The shadow people weren’t demons. They were evil, and they were supposed to be in a place where the universe disposed of souls who had run out of options.
Their leader was right here.
“You’re right, Gray.” I turned to smile at him. He was in Mary’s arms. Her eyes were huge, but I could see from how she clung to him she wouldn’t let him go. I nodded at her, and she did the same to me. “I can’t leave him like this. I won’t.”
I was calm, which was surprising. I was about to do what had never been done, what might not be possible. I could kill Malcolm in the process.
When all other options were gone, what was left was to get to doing what had to be done. Shit, my mother used to say that, and I’d completely forgotten. Her voice was always in my head.
When it came down to it, I’d had one life with two big pauses. I was her daughter, and when I’d lost her, I’d never really been able to grieve her passing. I’d ignored the things she’d taught me. For years, as I’d remade myself into who I thought Kendall Yates was going to be—who I wanted that version of myself to be presented as—I’d pretty much pretended that my childhood didn’t exist. She was loaded with wisdom, and I’d ignored it all.
Funny, I couldn’t stop thinking about her now.
“I trust you all to do what you do.”
The Master laughed. “There’s nothing you can do. I keep Malcolm as long as I want him, and I get to do what I want to with his powers. Nothing can stop me.”
“Except for me.” I put my hand on Malcolm’s arm. “I’m sorry if this hurts, hon.”
Malcolm was the better exorcist. I could kill the heck out of a demon, but when it had come to getting the demon out of Grayson, I’d needed Malcolm. It bothered me how well the shadow impersonated him. How deep inside of him was this thing?
“The first time I watched my mother do this to Malcolm, I was nine years old. She placed her hand on his chest.” I mirrored the action as I spoke. “She told him she was going to make everything okay. I never asked him if he heard her. I was too transfixed. So, hear me, Malcolm. This ends. One way or another.”
I pushed my power into him. Performing an exorcist was complicated. A demon infected everything. First the person had to be bathed in light before the demon could be ripped out. It burned the practitioner performing the act.
I had no idea if shoving The Master out would be the same thing. The world faded out into white and black. Time stopped. Everything stopped moving. It was only The Master and myself.
He stared at me. My eyes adjusted to the brightness, and then I could see him.
My years in the Shadow Dimension had given me the ability to see and recognize all kinds of creatures. But I hadn’t expected The Master to be human.
Only that was exactly how he appeared—a human and, to my utter horror, a pretty good-looking one, too. Dressed in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt—or maybe my mind clothed him in something I could deal with—he had blond hair and blue eyes.
“Hi, Kendall.”
“What do I call you? I’m not going to use the word Master, not if we’re speaking like people.”
This was so completely bizarre. I might never believe I’d done this. I had to stay focused.
He looked around. “I’m impressed you could do this. Not one person with your talent could pull it off. You can call me Lance.”
“When did you live, Lance? When were you on Earth the first time?”
I circled him. He had several inches on me. If it came to a physical fight, he’d win. But the good news was I knew how to fight shadows. I didn’t want to have to do it in some weird zone where we were both, kind of, inside Malcolm’s body.
“A very long, long time ago.” He shrugged. “How did you like living with the shadows?”
Why did he care? “It’s about as bad as anything could be, but I survived. You miss Earth so much?”
He circled me, his eyes travelling down the length of my body. “I miss some things about Earth. Some things I will be glad to have back now that I have my official body.”
“You’re not keeping it.”
He leaned forward. “Don’t you remember why it was very important I not get any of your bodies? Why it was important I not find your precious Phoenix?”
I gulped, my throat suddenly feeling tight. That was right. It had been such a long time since I’d given it any thought. But, yes, we weren’t supposed to lose our bodies. We were the only skins the shadows could live in long-term. The powerful ones wanted us.
“Try to get me out. It won’t even hurt him. Take a look around. He won’t feel a thing because he’s not here. It’s you and me. I’m in here alone. I own his body. This way you see me? This is what I looked like when I was alive. But now the whole world will see me as Malcolm. Everyone. And your friends—Chase and Ross—the ones you sent back to get the Phoenix, we have their bodies, too.”
I shook my head. “You don’t win. That’s not how this ends.”
“Yes it is, sweetheart. Yes, it is. So stay in your dimension. If you stay here, with your people and your children, we won’t bother you. Come back to Earth and it’s all over. Maybe that’s what you want. Life without Malcolm might be unbearable.”
I pushed all my energy at him; all the ability I had to destroy a shadow I shoved from my body, and then nothing happened. I gasped. I’d really believed that even if it killed Malcolm, I could get Lance out of his body. Except I couldn’t.
“This isn’t your fault, Kendall. It never was. You didn’t ask for it. All you did was die.” He touched the side of my face, and I reared back. “You were nine. He was ten. You died. The easiest thing to do. You were children. You wouldn’t have ended up in the Shadow Dimension. The universe would have moved you on. Michael and the others did this to you. None of it is your fault. Stay here. Live your life. Die again. Come to my Earth, and you’re dead.”