Daniel Black had never feared the dark. The light scared him much more, even now that he was a teenager. He had a good reason for his peculiar fear, because he was born without a shadow.
As he limped down the sidewalk on Cary Street, he avoided lingering in the path of any street lights. He wasn’t worried about people not seeing a shadow. The worry was them seeing that the shadow stretched out on the sidewalk didn’t match.
He passed a couple who did their best not to make eye contact with him. His plain black cane made people more uncomfortable about staring for too long, and for those who were rude enough to stare, they usually focused on the cane and not his shadow. That’s why he used the cane, not the two-inch advantage his left leg had over his right. He wore a heel lift to compensate for that.
The sidewalk wasn’t crowded. The Carytown part of Richmond was made up of local businesses, most of which were closed after nine, especially on a Thursday night in February.
He’d only been forced to park his car a little more than a block from his destination.
He stopped in front of the veterinary eye care office. The windows were dark. He leaned against the olive green building for support as he zipped up his jacket. The brick wall chilled his back. His main worry wasn’t the dropping mercury. He just wanted to be sure no one was watching him.
A narrow, dark space separated the green building from its red neighbor.
This was Purgatory Alley.
He first visited this place when he was seven. Even then, he understood this wasn’t the safest place to go. Not everything that came out of these shadows was a friend.
As soon as he stepped off the sidewalk and into the alley, the street noise dropped, muffled like a dream. Shadows thickened, and he had to push his way through them. Whispers taunted from every direction. Flat darkness obscured the brick walls, making the alley look bigger even as it provoked claustrophobia in Daniel.
“Baxter, you there?”
A figure slipped out of the black wall, cutting Daniel off from the sidewalk. He tensed.
The first thing he ever saw emerge from these walls had threatened to rip his shadow from his body.
Daniel relaxed when the darkness formed a familiar head with glowing neon green slits for eyes.
“Thought you’d never get here, kiddo.” Baxter was one of the first friendly shadows Daniel met in Purgatory Alley. He had a human shape to him, but Daniel got the impression that wasn’t what he really looked like. Baxter probably made himself appear that way to avoid scaring him. He was the one who explained to Daniel that he had a borrowed shadow. When he got put together by whatever Higher Power does its thing, a shadow got left out. Whether that was intentional was anybody’s guess. In order for Daniel to come alive, a shadow had to be added.
“Sue me. I have parents. Had to tell Mom I was running out to get a folder for a term paper I’ve got due in English next week.” Sadly, that wasn’t a lie, and now that Mom knew about it, she’d probably hound him until he finished it. “What’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow night?”
Baxter leaned in close and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Word is out. Someone wants you dead.”
“Me? Why would anyone want me dead?”
“Doesn’t sound like their beef is with you.” Baxter shrugged. “Sounds like a personal issue with your shadow.”
“Feng?” He looked over his shoulder at his borrowed shadow. Within the alley, Feng took on more substance. His eyes blazed bright red and his head had taken on that samurai helmet shape he adopted whenever he felt threatened. Feng wore the helmet a lot in chemistry class. Daniel really hated that teacher.
Daniel and Feng had never been able to talk, not in the traditional manner. He couldn’t decide if Feng was just the silent type, if it was a language barrier thing, or if Feng was mute.
Baxter had said that was unusual, even though most borrowed shadows never spoke to their owners.
“Feng, who’s after us?”
He hoped Feng could at least relay the answer through Baxter. Shadows had their own way of talking. Daniel had asked Baxter how “shadow speak” worked, but despite several attempts, none of his explanations had made much sense.
Feng’s response was to shrink, which Daniel had learned equaled with feeling shame.
“That’s not helping, dude.” Daniel looked back to Baxter. “So do you know who it is?”
“Don’t have a name for you, but it’s another borrowed shadow.”
“Here in Richmond?” Daniel’s voice cracked. “What are the odds of that?”
“Chances of a person being born without a shadow are pretty thin. Only about 2,000 people with borrowed shadows in the whole world. That’s still a lot of people, but most of them never even realize they’re borrowing one.”
Daniel glared back at Feng. “Yeah, well it’s kind of hard not to notice when you’ve got the shadow of a dead samurai stapled to your back.” Thankfully, Feng didn’t always have the helmet on, but despite his best efforts, he always looked much too big to match Daniel’s thin frame. His shadow made more sense for an NFL linebacker.
“So who is this shadow attached to?” Daniel asked Baxter.
“Sorry, kiddo. Don’t know that either. What I do know is that this shadow aims to take you two out this weekend.”
“I appreciate the warning.” They slapped palms, which made a soft woosh sound as Daniel’s hand passed through the semi-substance that was Baxter.
Daniel walked to the edge of the alley. He looked to make sure all was clear and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
He passed beneath a street lamp on the way to his car. Feng spread out ahead of him. Still had on that stupid helmet, too.
“You and I are going to have a long talk tonight,” Daniel muttered.
He just hoped if he was going to die this weekend, the killer could get it over with before Mom made him work on his term paper.
• • •
By the time Daniel returned home, it was almost ten. Mom gave him the evil eye.
Fortunately, he’d thought to give himself a cover story for being gone so long, which was why he showed up with a café mocha.
“I sent you a text to tell you I was going by the café.” He’d even asked if they wanted him to get them anything. Was it his fault they never kept their cell phones with them? It would be just his luck to get grounded and then murdered all in the same weekend.
“And yes, it’s decaf.” He held up the cup to display the mark on the side, not that they could probably read the barista script from across the room.
Having survived parental interrogation, he retreated to his room and closed the door.
Once in there, he tossed the bag with his term paper cover onto the bed along with his cane.
He turned off his overhead light, sat at his desk and clicked on the tiny desk lamp. It had one of those metal ice cream cone-shaped tops with the bendable neck. He twisted the lamp’s top so that the light pointed at him. The silhouette of Feng’s upper torso appeared within a circle of light against the far wall. When he’d been little, he’d do this sort of thing and laugh for hours at all the silly things Feng would do to entertain him.
Daniel noticed Feng was no longer sporting the helmet. He had the hair knot thing going on now.
“So what’s the what here?” He’d learned a long time ago that they could have a conversation like this. Feng could nod and shrug, and while Feng couldn’t or wouldn’t exactly speak to him, Daniel could almost feel some of his shadow’s thoughts. Sometimes, the connection worked stronger than others. Whenever Daniel felt threatened, Feng pulled in real close and could even prompt a reaction from him. His parents still told the story of how, when he was a baby, he punched and broke Grandpa’s nose when Grandpa did the old “I stole your nose” trick. Apparently, Feng didn’t find that very funny.
“Any idea who you’ve got so ticked, they’d come back as someone’s shadow just to even the score?”
Feng shrugged.
“Really? Dude, seriously!” He slumped forward in his chair and groaned. “I mean, how many people could you possibly have ticked off when you were alive that they’d hate you enough to want to kill me, too?”
Feng drew his sword, a dark line that he swung with ease. Daniel could almost hear his voice, but it wasn’t like a whisper. It was more like the raw thought itself shifting from the shadow into his mind.
“Killed many enemies, huh?”
Feng nodded.
“Just great. So you don’t have a clue which enemy this would even be.” He grumbled to himself, “Guess it’s not like it would’ve really helped a lot, but still.”
Daniel had a hard time imagining his shadow killing anyone when he’d been alive. Sure, he’d been a sword-wielding samurai and all, but this was also the shadow he’d watched dance and pantomime on his wall like a Saturday morning cartoon when he was three. He often wondered what made Feng choose to be attached to a white kid in the middle of the ’burbs in Virginia. He’d asked Baxter, but the best answer he ever got was that it was “Something honor demanded… maybe.”
“So what’s the plan here, chief?”
Feng stood tall, crossed his arms and capped it off with a firm nod of the head. Daniel guessed that just meant to “Stand ready” or something like that.
“You think we need to take this seriously?”
Another firm nod.
Daniel’s stomach clenched. The worst thing he’d ever dealt with were bullies at school, not that many of them bothered him. Even most bullies wouldn’t mess with a “cripple.”
Apparently, it was bad business in the bully trade. For those bullies with fewer scruples, he could usually disarm the situation with a few jokes at his own expense. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he’d get any laughs out of whoever was coming here to kill him.
• • •
Daniel had hoped a good night’s sleep would make his troubles seem less oppressive.
That might have worked if he hadn’t kept waking up all night. Just getting to sleep took more than an hour each time he tried. His mind wouldn’t shut off, obsessing on all the things he didn’t know about this person determined to kill him.
By the time he was exhausted enough to sleep, it was time for school. He’d almost fallen asleep during the spelling test in English, and he was pretty sure “paradocks” and “psychilogical” were the closest he’d come to spelling anything right. He didn’t do much better in his Trigonometry class.
“Ahem, Mister Black?”
Daniel blinked as he looked over at his Trig teacher Mister Garibaldi, who was staring at him over the rims of his glasses. Drat! Had he fallen asleep? He didn’t think he’d closed his eyes, but he’d completely zoned out. He looked at the problem displayed on the Promethean board.
What were they even going over in class today?
“I’m sorry, Mister Garibaldi.” Daniel sat straighter and wiped the bit of drool from the side of his mouth. “What was the question?”
“Would you be so kind as to tell the class if these two functions on the board are inverses?” Mister Garibaldi’s eyes narrowed. “That’s assuming, of course, you’re quite done admiring the back of Miss Winston’s head.”
That earned more than a few snickers, and he saw Allison’s body stiffen in the chair in front of him. Just perfect.
He cleared his throat to stall for time as he studied the equations. Given the mush between his ears, all he read was gibberish plus gibberish divided by more gibberish. He’d have had a better chance of making sense out of it if he was dyslexic. Then Allison tapped her pencil on her desk two times. God bless her.
“No, sir, they’re not.” He forced as much certainty into his voice as he could and prayed Mister Garibaldi didn’t ask him to say why.
“Very good.” His teacher pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose into non-glare mode and looked at the person who’d laughed the loudest at the earlier joke. “Miss Pindler, perhaps you’d like to explain why he’s correct.”
Class ended a few minutes later. Thank God it was lunch time. As soon as he shoved his books into his locker, he was going off-campus to get a Mountain Dew or maybe even a Red Bull. He needed something to wake himself up if he was going to survive his last two classes.
“So where are you buying me lunch?”
He turned around to find Allison standing there with a smirk on her face.
“Buy you lunch? What?” He shook his head, trying to catch up with whatever she was talking about. When had he told her he was buying her lunch?
“For saving your gluteus maximus back in Trig.” She threw in a head bob move as if this should have been obvious. “Come on. If we hurry, we can make it to the Burger Doctor.”
“Oh, all right.”
They’d been best friends since fifth grade. Allison was pretty cool for a girl. While all the other girls were into dresses and dolls, she and Daniel were pretending to be ninjas in her backyard and talking about Star Wars. They were not in a relationship, though. He’d said those exact words to Dad back then. Dad had found that hysterical and still loved to refer to Allison as “That girl you’re not in a relationship with.” Everyone through middle school was convinced they should go out together, mainly because she was one of the few girls shorter than he was. They were juniors in high school, and now even she was taller than him, if only by an inch.
“So what’s your deal, pickle?” she asked between bites of her plain double hamburger. “You look like road kill, and Feng has been wearing the helmet all day.”
He just placed his head on the orange table they’d taken inside Burger Doctor. It was slightly greasy, but that didn’t stop him from letting his forehead linger there for dramatic effect.
“Yeah, well Feng is part of the problem.” He spelled out the whole rumor about another borrowed shadow in town to settle some old score. She was one of the few people he’d ever told about Feng.
The first time he’d told a friend had been in third grade. That guy had made a comment about Daniel’s shadow being so big, but Feng had refused to perform when Daniel had explained why. Daniel had been really cross with Feng about that, but when that supposed friend turned into a jerk in middle school, he was glad Feng hadn’t played along. He’d told his parents when he was three, of course, but even though they’d made a few comments about his shadow over the years, they fell into the “Total Denial” camp. Most people did, but Baxter had warned him there were those out there who were in the know. Some of them would think Daniel was possessed and might even try to kill him.
Despite the risks, Allison had received the Feng seal of approval.
“So what are you going to do?” Allison had stopped eating.
“Hide in my room all weekend.” He laughed. “What else can I do?”
Allison didn’t meet his eyes. She drew circles in her ketchup with a French fry. “Well, I guess that’s probably best.”
What was her problem? It wasn’t like this assassin was coming after her.
Then he remembered. The Byrd Theater in Carytown was holding a midnight showing of Army of Darkness tonight. The only reason Allison was being allowed to stay out that late for it was because she told her parents that Daniel was going with her.
“Well, maybe not all weekend.” He stopped for a big bite of his burger. Thankfully, all this mess with Feng wasn’t hurting his appetite.
“Daniel, it’s okay.” She was still drawing hieroglyphics in her ketchup, though.
For a girl he wasn’t in a relationship with, she sure did know how to play the guilt card.
Truth was, he was a little bummed, too. He was really wanting to see Army of Darkness in the theater.
“You know, if this other shadow knows I’m here, then it probably knows where I live, so not staying there might actually be safer for me.”
She didn’t look up, but she smiled. “That’s a good point.” She finally took a bite of her fry.
They shut up and wolfed down the rest of their lunch so they could get back to campus in time for fifth period. He was in a much better mood, thinking about the movie. That he’d be going with Allison, who looked a lot prettier these days, had nothing to do with it. Right.
• • •
Daniel spent the time between school and going to the movie in his bedroom. He left the blinds in front of his desk cracked just enough to let him see down onto the street. The longer he watched for any suspicious cars or pedestrians, the more he realized he knew jack about the people who lived in his neighborhood.
They lived in one of the nicer sections of the West End, and a lot of women were power walking past the house while the sun was still out. As the sun went down, he realized it was way too dark outside to see if anyone or anything suspicious was out there. Besides, he knew better than most just how well a person with a borrowed shadow could hide.
He needed to figure out what he was dealing with. If he could manage that, then maybe he’d have a better chance of spotting an attack in time to stay alive.
The more he thought on it, the more he decided the person coming after him must be younger than he was. After all, this was a shadow chasing Feng, suggesting Feng had gotten here first. Even with his shorter leg as a disadvantage, he hoped the age difference might even things out.
Contemplating what might be hiding in the shadows tonight had turned Daniel into a paranoid mess by the time he picked up Allison.
“My, my, Monsieur Black, aren’t we looking dapper,” she said as she climbed into the passenger seat of his car. “Wow, you even broke out the falcon.”
She patted the silver-plated falcon head at the end of his cane.
“Just dressing for the occasion. I don’t want to get killed tonight.”
He scanned her yard and street for anyone suspicious. There was a red sports car pulling to a stop in front of the house across the street. Yeah, he was on full alert.
“Ahem!”
He looked over at Allison, who had this really unpleasant curl to her lips.
“What?”
“You really are hopeless. You realize this, right?”
“Huh?” He looked at the front of her house, the yard, and back at the red car with some guy climbing out and walking up the driveway of the house across the street. Had he missed something?
“If you have any hopes of ever having a girlfriend, you need to learn to repay a lady’s compliment.”
He shrugged. “Well, you always look nice.” She made a habit of dressing “classy but eccentric,” as she liked to call it. She was wearing a dark red velvet coat over a black tuxedo shirt and black pants.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “So not the point. Just drive.”
“Sorry, I’m a little focused on not ending the night as a chalk outline.”
“I don’t think this guy is going to kill you inside the Byrd.”
She had a point. After all, that was part of the reason they were still going to the movie.
After a few minutes of the silent treatment, Allison apparently decided he’d suffered long enough. “I’ve been thinking over this whole thing with Feng’s assassin.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, how has this guy even found you?” she asked.
“It wouldn’t be difficult to narrow down the city. There aren’t a lot of borrowed shadows out there. All you have to do is go to a ‘shadow well’ like Purgatory Alley and ask around. Finding out Feng and I are in Richmond probably wouldn’t take long at all.”
They found a space on top of the parking deck behind the movie theater. Not too far to walk, thankfully.
They strolled past several people on their way to the ticket booth. He watched for anyone whose shadow didn’t match. With so many people and all of them moving around, that wasn’t so simple a task.
Once the movie started, he relaxed a bit. He decided it wasn’t likely for anyone to try anything while the movie was playing. Several rows in the front waved their hands in the air as the opening credits started and shouted, “Hail to the King, Baby!”
Allison shouted, too. “Give me some sugar!”
“You’re a nut.” They were both laughing, though.
Halfway through the film, Allison made a bathroom run. He’d never known her to make it through an entire film without at least one pit stop. That was why they’d made sure to get her a seat on the aisle.
“Don’t let anyone take my spot.” She didn’t wait for his reply.
He didn’t expect to have to make good on her request, but less than a minute later, someone with pale-white skin dropped into her seat. Daniel guessed this guy must have been in his twenties. The darkness made it near impossible to see what his shadow looked like, but Daniel knew right away this man had to be the one with the borrowed shadow. His eyes were solid black spheres, not a bit of whites or iris visible.
“Greetings, Feng.”
Daniel said nothing. He was too stunned by what he was seeing to think of anything useful, much less pithy. He’d expected someone a lot younger and smaller than this.
“You picked a weakling.”
The stranger’s accusation drew him out of his silence, but he sensed Feng touch his shoulder, a request for him to not bite at the bait.
“We’re in a public place. You really think you can kill me here?”
The black-eyed man glanced at the rows in front and behind them. “It’s dark, but you’re right. Meet me at Purgatory Alley in five minutes, and be certain you come alone and tell no one.”
“Why should I?” Even as he asked the question, Daniel already suspected what the answer would be.
“Because if you don’t, we’ll kill your girlfriend.” The black-eyed man stood and pointed at him. “Five minutes.”
Those last two words were loud enough to earn a “Shhh!” from someone in the row behind them. The black-eyed man was already running out of the theater, though. Daniel chased his assassin and saw him climb into the back of a black Ford Taurus waiting out front. The door closed, but was open long enough for Daniel to see Allison in the back. Daniel shouted her name, but before he could reach the car, it sped away and around the next corner. His only consolation was that she didn’t look hurt, just scared.
The Byrd was on the same street as Purgatory Alley. Five minutes. Did he run for it, or try to get his car and drive it?
RUN!
The voice in his head startled him, but the instant he heard that one word, he knew whose voice it was.
“You’ve been holding out on me,” Daniel said.
Feng was right, though. He ran for it. As running goes, it wasn’t going to break any high school records. He couldn’t risk that he might trip and injure himself. He had to reach Purgatory Alley before the black-eyed man hurt Allison.
“Who is he?” Daniel asked between gasps.
Ishida Masanari. He was a samurai and fought beside me. Feng’s voice was both new and yet familiar. Daniel recognized the tone of shame in that voice. Then he realized what Feng had said, this was a fellow samurai. How did that make sense? He was expecting this to be an enemy.
He is our enemy, Feng said, apparently reading Daniel’s thoughts. Ten of us learned about borrowed shadows, that we could find a form of immortality through them.
Daniel let him roll with the history lesson. He tried to absorb the details as he darted down the sidewalk. There were still people outside, but not enough to slow him. He just had to avoid plowing into someone.
We had agreed to meet after we had taken over our hosts.
That stopped Daniel short of his destination. He was standing just beneath a street light about a hundred feet past the Can Can restaurant. Feng, wearing his helmet, was looking up at him from the sidewalk.
“You mean they possessed them?” He paused to catch his breath. “Like some demon!”
Yes, but I cannot do this to you. It requires the shadow to condition his host from an early age. I chose not to steal your life. Feng’s arms spread out in a desperate gesture, a plea.
“And that’s why these other samurai want you dead?” He wiped the sweat from his forehead before it could drop into his eyes.
We agreed to meet on a specific date.
“And when you didn’t make that date, they thought you’d betrayed them?”
Feng answered with a nod. So it would appear. I am sorry.
“They’re going to kill me and Allison, aren’t they?”
Doubtless.
“Then we better hope all nine of them didn’t come hunting for us.” Daniel ran again. “Don’t suppose you have a plan?”
One with slim hope.
• • •
The brief stop near Can Can allowed Daniel to reach Purgatory Alley without being completely exhausted.
He felt that familiar grip of semi-solid shadows as he stepped into the alley. The far end of the narrow space opened into a back lot for the businesses which had closed hours ago. As the lot came into view, he saw the black Ford Taurus. Ishida was standing in front of the car, flanked by two others. All of them were older than Daniel and looked like a bunch of Navy SEAL wannabes. The windows on the car were dark and tinted. He hoped Allison was in there, but there was no guarantee they hadn’t dropped her off with someone else.
Daniel was breathing heavily and rested his weight on his cane.
Having the benefit of a car ride, Ishida stood tense but rested. A single light in the alley was shining down on them. Daniel realized the three in front of the car didn’t cast any shadows.
They are within them, Feng whispered. Could these others hear Feng speak to him?
In the better light, Daniel saw their eyes weren’t pure black, but a sea of colliding black winds, some darker than others.
“When you did not show in Tokyo, brother, we were worried.” Those weren’t the exact words Ishida used. Daniel assumed he’d spoken in Japanese. Feng whispered the translation to him.
“I’m not a threat to you.” He tapped the black heel lift on the bottom of his right shoe with his cane. “We aren’t a threat.”
“Shut up, boy!” The snarl that contorted Ishida’s face required no translation.
Daniel’s fear set his heart pounding, making him lightheaded. He forced out the words Feng had told him to speak and tried not to think on the fact that Allison’s life and his own were at stake.
“I will offer you one chance to release my friend and leave in peace. Do this, and we will never threaten you.”
Ishida brought his hands together in front of him. Shadows shifted and formed the shape of a katana within his hands. Somewhere in the back of Daniel’s mind, he couldn’t help but think that looked so cool. The other part of his brain was screaming to turn tail and run.
Put your trust in me, Daniel.
“Not much choice.” He stepped backwards.
He felt more than saw Feng envelope his body like armor formed from darkness. This wasn’t a possession like the others. This was protection and partnership. It was more than that, though. He could sense Feng’s will and battle-trained instincts pushing his body and enhancing it to make up for his disabilities.
Ishida lunged at him. Daniel twisted the falcon head on his cane and the black stick slid apart from the handle to reveal the blade of a sword.
He countered Ishida’s attack. His arms moved faster than his own thoughts. Whispers of Feng’s memories filtered through his mind, including a sense of calm familiarity. War had been his borrowed shadow’s life, and even in a second life, war had found him.
They used both parts of the sword cane, the blade and the stick, to defend themselves from Ishida. Panic kept Daniel moving, ducking left and right. The muscles in his arms burned.
What kept him in control and alive was Feng’s calm. Even after so much time, this was just another sword fight among hundreds.
Then Daniel felt one of his swings connect. The stick of his cane cracked against Ishida’s temple. The black-eyed man’s jaw dropped, turning his lips into a round “O.”
Feng’s voice cried out. Strike!
Daniel kicked. His foot slammed into Ishida’s knee with a crack. The black-eyed man fell to the ground with a guttural scream.
The other two came after him. Daniel struggled to deflect their shadow swords and was overwhelmed. One of them cut his left forearm and knocked the stick of his cane from his hand.
Even worse, Ishida was back on his feet. His injured leg swelled, bones clicking as if shifting back into place.
All three attacked now.
Into the alley! Even screaming, Feng sounded in complete control.
Daniel gave up on the sword fight and ran into the alley. The shadows floating in the narrow space nearly tripped him. He hoped they would do the same to Ishida and the other two.
Stopping short of the sidewalk on Cary Street, Daniel turned and faced Ishida. The alley made it impossible for more than one of them to attack him at a time.
Ishida wiped at a line of blood running down the side of his face. “Run, and your girl will die!”
Daniel held up his sword and looked past Ishida to see the other two had followed them into the alley.
“I’m not running.” Daniel smiled.
Ishida’s rage shifted to wide-eyed horror as he realized they’d walked into a trap.
“This is home court advantage.”
A humanoid shape with green eyes darted out from one of the walls. Baxter wrapped fingers around Ishida’s throat. “Say good night, Gracie.”
Dozens of shadows erupted from the walls and surrounded all three of the black-eyed men. Baxter’s other fingers extended and morphed into a pair of tentacles which grabbed the dark winds in Ishida’s eyes and ripped the shadow from the body. The screams of all three men were muffled with no hope of reaching anyone on the street.
Startled, human eyes appeared where the spheres of shadows had once been, but they were lifeless eyes. All three bodies collapsed to the floor of the alley. The attacking shadows retreated into the black walls, taking the shadows of the three samurai with them.
Daniel stepped over the bodies and into the back lot. Feng was still in place as his armor when he pulled open the back door. Allison screamed through a gag that was duct taped into place. She struggled to pull away from him, but her arms and legs had been zip-tied together.
Feng peeled back now that they knew no one else was in the car. Allison relaxed once she saw his face. He helped her get free.
“They’re dead,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“They didn’t hurt me.” She scrambled out of the car and hugged him. This wasn’t the first time they’d ever hugged, but it was probably the first time being that close hadn’t felt awkward. He’d thought they were going to die.
They decided it would be better not to be around when someone found the bodies and went straight to Daniel’s car. He didn’t take her home right away since getting there early would raise too many questions.
He told her what had happened in the alley, how Feng was now talking, why the other samurai had wanted him dead and how the heat of the fight had distracted them from the potential dangers of entering Purgatory Alley.
Shortly after they’d stopped by a drug store to get something to cover the cut on his arm, they were driving back to Allison’s house.
“Are you worried the others might come after you?” she asked.
“Yes.” His laughter betrayed his fears. “But Baxter plans to pass the word along to leave me and Feng be, and that if any of the other samurai show their faces in Richmond, they better not expect a warm reception from the shadows here.”
They said little else until they pulled into her driveway. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“Can’t say that was the best date I’ve ever had, but it’s going to take more than a bunch of shadow-eyed freaks to mess me up.” She put her hand on his arm and kissed him on the cheek. “Good job asking, though. I might just get you trained for some lucky girl before you know it.”
“Very funny.”
Daniel walked Allison to her front door and even got another peck on the cheek.
On the way home, he stopped at a corner near his house. He realized he couldn’t wait any longer for an answer to the question that had pestered him since Feng had started talking, and he wanted to see Feng when he asked it.
He turned off the car and got out to stand beneath the streetlight. Feng stood along the ground like a midget version of him. He was glad to see Feng wasn’t in helmet mode.
“Why didn’t you do it to me? Why didn’t you possess me the way the others did?”
I never had any children or a legacy to survive me. To do what we had planned would have made my only legacy an eternity of stolen lives. Feng’s head turned to look away. I am ashamed that I did not recognize this until after you were born.
He remembered all the times Feng would entertain him and had looked out for him over the years. In many ways, he’d been like a strange blend of friend, guardian angel, and parent.
“You should have said something. You were silent all these years. Why?” His fist curled tightly about the handle of his cane. “Did you feel guilty?”
I made a vow to let you have your life. Shadows are silent.
He didn’t know what to say to that. He was angry about all that Feng had kept from him, but would living his childhood in fear of shadow-born attackers really have been better?
“Without a borrowed shadow, I wouldn’t have had a life at all, and I would’ve been really lonely growing up without you. I’m okay with you talking more, but I think I understand why you chose not to.”
I am glad.
“So are we all good?”
Feng nodded and even added in a bow.
Daniel climbed back into the car, cranked the stereo and pressed the accelerator.
You drive too fast.
“Don’t feel like you have to talk that much.”
“Borrowed Shadows” was originally published by Chamberton Publishing as part of the science fiction/fantasy anthology Limelight in October 2012.