Prince of Shadows by Susan Krinard

Then she called the Wakanabo home. Julie answered. Julie, like a harbor in a storm, an island of sanity in a world gone mad.

“Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” Julie asked quietly.

Alex told the story between ragged gulps of air. When it was over, Julie was silent a long time.

“He didn’t do it, Alex,” she said at last.

“I know.”

“You’re still going after him, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t, Alex. Come home.”

Alex rubbed tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “He needs me now, more than ever. I have to know he’s all right. Julie—” she closed her eyes, “Julie, I love him. More than life.”

Julie sighed, her breath shuddering with emotion. “I know. And I told you not to let him go. But there’s something else. Kieran… he’s not the only one of his kind.”

“How do you—”

“It’s true.”

Alex was too numb to work through all the implications of Julie’s certainty. “Another feeling, Julie?” she asked hoarsely.

“That’s why you have to come back, Alex. It’s too dangerous. Who knows what’s out there committing these murders? Maybe someone like Kieran. And I believe that the answers will have to come from Kieran. Only he can find them.”

“You’re wrong, Julie. I have to be there, with him, I know he needs me, and as long as he needs me I’ll never abandon him.”

“Then know what you’re getting into.”

The voice was no longer Julie’s. Alex recognized Julie’s grandmother, imagined the deeply lined face and unfathomable dark eyes. She shivered and gripped the receiver as if it might fly from her hand.

“What Julie said is true,” Mary said, “but even she doesn’t know all of it. A great darkness shadows you now. Kieran is a part of it. If the shadow touches you, you may never escape it. And it is right behind you.”

Alex looked over her shoulder. The morning was clear and bright, the sky free of clouds. “Is it the real killer?” she asked with deliberate calm.

But it was the operator’s voice she heard, demanding change she didn’t have. She hung up and looked at her watch. The police could already be on her tail. She couldn’t worry about shadows when Kieran was out there in need of her help.

She cleared her mind of all thoughts but one and began to drive. Northwest, toward a town called Lovell. Find Kieran, she chanted silently, find him, and the answers will come. For all of us.

* * *

Joseph drove as if all the demons of hell snapped at his heels.

He drove with the sight of a young woman’s torn body caught forever behind his eyes. He could hardly recall now what she’d looked like when she was alive—when he finally dropped her off, after she refused to listen. He’d gone on his way and then thought of how he had frightened her, thought of apologizing and making it right. But the place he returned to, where he’d left her, had been trampled and soaked with blood. She would never hear his apology. And now all he could remember was the terror on her face, terror of the last thing she’d seen before she died.

He had been too late. Kieran had killed again.

Joseph wept silently. My son, my son. You must die. There is no other way.

But not at the hands of police. No. Joseph had let the authorities know about the girl, but then he had left. There could be no more delays. He knew they were ahead of him again, Kieran and the woman. He had to reach them, stop them. Too many failures. Too many deaths because he had let a monster live.

Over three hundred miles to the border of British Columbia. Time enough. And if he didn’t catch them by then, he knew where they were headed.

He drove through the day, leaving the prairie behind. The mountains took him in, whispering of secrets they had kept for a thousand years. And when dusk began to fall, he saw the red glow of taillights ahead and knew: it might be them.

It was only a matter of time.

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