Hunting Shadows (Shadow Series #3) (27 page)

“Stupid bitch. Did you really think you were going to escape?”

He grabbed my shoulders and pushed me to the ground, pinning my legs with his knees
and holding my wrists prisoner above my head with one hand. He reached inside his
coat pocket and pulled out a knife, taking off the protective sheath with his teeth.
The blade gleamed in the moonlight and I reacted instinctively, bucking wildly and
screaming as loudly as I could. Instead of looking alarm
ed
, Ryan laughed and pinned me against the ground harder.

“You can scream as loud as you want. No one will
hear you here.”

Ryan
slowly
licked the flat side of the knife
with his tongue
a
s his insane eyes bored into m
e. He was definitely crazy but I still tried to reason with him.

“
Please
don’t do this. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I know this isn’t really you.
Ryan, I care about you. You’
ve helped me so much these
past few
months
. I know deep down that you care about me too. Please don’t do something that you’ll
regret.”

“Now you’re trying to whore yourself to save your life?” The lunacy of his expression
told me that there was no reaching the sane part of him. His lips widened in a gruesome
imitation of a smile.
“I guess you’ve noticed that he’s been panting after you. It’s sickening, really.
He thinks you’re
so
special and
so
powerful. Well, who’s the powerful one now?
You’re as weak as he is!”

I stared up at him in horror. He was talking about himself as if he
was
another person, but I didn’t think a vardoger was inside him. My powers hadn’t worked
against him, but maybe it was possible that I just wasn’t strong enough to destroy
his vardoger. It gave me renewed hope because that meant Ryan was in there somewhere,
and he could fight against the vardoger.

“Ryan, fight!” I cried as I started funneling my power to try again. “I know you can
hear me and I know you’re strong enough to take control of your body. Don’t let the
vardoger win!”

He threw back his head and laughed. I took the opportunity to slam my energy into
him again, but it did nothing. When he looked back down at me, his eyes were still
crazed.

“I’m not a vardoger, bitch. Enough talking. Now it’s time to do some cutting.”

I struggled wildly as I saw him lowering the knife, refusing to believe that this
was the end. I gasped when the sharp edge of the
knife sank into
my cheek. Wetness followed the sting and
I waited for the knife to sink in deeper, afraid to move in case I made it worse.
I was sur
prised when the knife lifted but didn’t come back down. I looked at Ryan’s face and
he looked as horrified as I felt. He dropped the knife and let go of my wrists. I
took a
dvantage of the opportun
ity and roughly pushed him off
me so that he fell back onto the ground. I grabbed the knife he had abandoned and
stood up, backing away quickly
. I held the knife out in front of me, just waiting for him to rush me so I could
sink it into his heart.

Instead of rushing me, he stayed on the ground but he had dropped his head so I couldn’t
see his expression. All the fear I had been trying to suppress rushed through me and
I almost choked as I screamed at him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you crazy?”

Ryan raised his head, his expression looking haunted, but I didn’
t care about the remorse I saw o
n his face. Remorse didn’t mean much when he had been about to slice me from top to
bottom. I raised my hand up to my chee
k that was wet with blood, but thankfully t
he cut was shallow. I didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Ryan
hadn’t stopped himself.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “That wasn’t me.”

A part of me
wanted
to just turn around and run, to get as far away from him as possible, but I
couldn’t deny the fact that I still
needed him to track down my father. I wasn’t sure how he was going to help me since
he had proven himself to be insane, but I had no other means of finding my father.
I also admitted to myself that, despite everything, I was concerned about him. I had
grown to admir
e and respect him, and if I was
being honest
with myself,
I cared about him more than I would ever admit out loud. My heart belonged to Simon
but I felt a kinship with Ryan that no one could understand unless they were a seer.
He understood me in ways that Simon never could. I also c
ouldn’t forget that he had
saved my life
more than once
.

D
espite my feelings, I was still incredibly wary of him. “Who was it then?” I asked.
“Was it a vardoger?”

He shook his head
and his voice trembled
when he spoke
. “No, it’s my sister.”

“You mean your sister’s vardoger?” I asked in confusion.

“No, it’s my sister’s soul.”

“Okay, you’re going t
o have to explain what that means
,” I said in frustration. “I hav
e no idea what the hell you’re talking about
.”

“Do you remember what I told you about my sister?”

“Of course.”

When Ryan spoke again, he was looking at me but his eyes were glazed as if he were
reliving the past. “
I wasn’t
able to destroy her vardoger. It overtook her but instead of her soul being extinguished,
I somehow absorbed it into my body. I think it happened when I used my powers to try
to kill her vardoger.” Ryan’s eyes cleared and he was looking at me like he was seeing
me again. “It wasn’t my sister that killed my parents. It was my sister’s vardoger.
She could never do anything like that. The person that’s in the mental hospital right
now isn’t my sister. It’s
my sister’s body with her vardoger inside.”

I raised my eyebrow. “So if it’s your sister’s soul in your body, how does that explain
your psychotic behavior?”

Ryan’s expression was grim. “I think something inside her broke when she saw what
happened to our parents. She had to see herself killing them, even though she wasn’t
really responsible. I’m not able to communicate with her but I can feel her pain.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “And that’s supposed to explain why she’s batshit crazy
and tried to cut me up?”

He shook his head, imploring me to understand. “She’s not herself. She has all this
anger that she doesn’t know what to do with, so she turns to violence. She’s angry
that she’s not in her own body so she tries to take control of mine.”

“Did you
hear
the shit she was saying to me?” I asked incredulously. “That’s not normal anger.”

“I hear and see everything she does when she takes control, but that’s not how she
really is. If I’m just able to get her back into her body and destroy her vardoger,
I know she’ll be okay. She’ll go back to normal.”

“You’re the one that told me she
wanted
her vardoger to overtake her so that she could destroy you.” Ryan seemed to be in
denial. I understood that he loved his sister and wanted to save her, but even he
had to recognize that his sister was seriously imbalanced and it had nothing to
do
with being ejected out of her body. “It sounds like she’s had some mental problems
from the beginning.”

“No, she’s just angry!” Ryan’s voice
rose, no longer imploring.
“I’m responsible for her being like this because I fucked up when I was trying to
destroy her vardoger. Somehow I pulled out her soul instead of the vardoger. Luckily
it entered me instead of expiring.”

“You’re crazy too,” I muttered, backing away. “There is no way in hell I’m being a
part of any of this.”

He scrambled up when he saw me moving away, but he didn’t come any closer when I swung
the knife towards him
in warning
. He put his hands out in supplication. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I laughed bitterly at his words. “What about sister dear? She was ready to slice and
dice me.”

“Look, you need me. You won’t be able to track your father without me.”

“So I should risk your sist
er rearing her ugly head
again? Sorry, I’m not willing to risk it.” Even as I said it, I wondered what the
hell I would do without Ryan. I not
only
regretted losing his tracking abilities, but I deeply felt the loss of someone I cared
about. Because the Ryan I had known no longer existed.

“I
’ll take measures to make sure she
can’t hurt you.” He looked chagrined as he spoke. “I can usually control her but
lately she’s been too strong for me to suppress. I have a pair of handcuffs in my
car. You can restrain me while I help you find your father.”

“And why
do you want to help me?” I asked
skeptically.
I
refrained from asking him
why he kept handcuffs in his car.
I didn’t want to know the answer.

“Because I think you can help me,” Ryan said. “With your powers, I think you have
the ability to draw out my sister’s vardoger and help me put her soul
back
in her body.” His voice quieted. “And I care about you. I don’t blame
you
if you don’t believe it, but I care about what happens to you.”

I ignored his last statement. “You’re just as strong as
I am
.
Why do you need my powers?
I saw how you killed all those vardogers at once.”

Ryan grimaced and then pulled something out of his pocket. I felt a slice of white
fury go through me when I saw the palladium and iridium disk in the palm of his hand.
“It was because of this. Somehow it made me stronger. Strong enough to destroy all
those vardoge
rs. I have a feeling that your
strength using this will be unparalleled.”

“You asshole. You stole that from me. Or was it your sister?” I spat out the last
word as if it was distasteful.

Ryan looked ashamed but it didn’t make me feel any better. “It was me. I got greedy
because I thought it could help my sister. I wasn’t thinking much beyond that.”

I didn’t know if I was willing to help him because I wasn’t convinced that his sister
wasn’t just plain evil. I had a feeling she would be just as evil in her normal body.
It was ironic that I was so worried about vardogers only to be faced with a human
soul that was almost more evil than any vardoger I had ever encountered.

I decided I would play along, because no matter what
,
I needed Ryan’s tracking abilities. I would determine
later on whether I would hold
up
my
end of the bargain.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll help you if you help me find my father. But if your sister starts
any shit, it’s over.”

Ryan nodded eagerly, looking grateful, and I pushed away the twinge of guilt since
I was pretty sure there was no way I was going to help his sister. I held a hand o
ut. “Throw me the metal disk
.”

He tossed it towards me and I kept my eyes on him as I caught it deftly. “Now take
out your gun, put it on the ground and walk away from it.”

I was rel
ieved that instead of claiming
he didn’t have it on him, he took it out of his waistband and did as I asked. I walked
towards it, keeping my eyes on him, and quickly bent down to pick it up. The gun felt
heavy and foreign in my hand but I gripped it tightly. “Now walk back to the car and
don’t look behind you.”

I followed Ryan from a safe distance as I tried to suppress my anxiety. I wondered
if I was a fool for not just dumping him and trying to find my father on my own, but
I didn’t think I’d have much success without his help.

“Where are the handcuffs?” I asked when we reached the car.

“In the trunk.”

“Get them.”
I watched as he opened the trun
k and reached in, pulling
out a p
air of handcuffs along with a
key. I took the key without comment when he placed it on top of the trunk after he
had closed it. I guided him to loop the handcuffs through a hole in the armrest of
the passenger car door and watched as he cuffed himself so that
both hands were trapped. I
briefly wondered if I should cuff him in the backseat, but I didn’t want any surprises
from behind.

I slid into the driver’s seat and looked at him warily. “Can you feel my father’s
energy?”

Ryan nodded. “He hasn’t gotten that far away. I have a feeling he knows we’re following
him and wants us to catch up. Just keep driving on this road.”