Born of Shadow - Book 1 (complete)

Chapter 52

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Liam stumbled backward blindly from the wall and felt his heel on the edge of the path. He teetered, back and forth, almost falling until at last, equilibrium returned. He stepped away from the edge, his heart battering his rib cage painfully. If he had fallen! Liam took a few deep breaths, trying to calm the paralyzing fear. He could feel his mind trying to speak to him, trying to tell him to get back in the shadows, that he was exposed out here. But if he did, he’d have to see that again. He looked back at the Shadow Queen. Her back was still toward him, her focus on her work. If she did happen to turn, she would see him. 

He reluctantly moved back to the shadows. He found that now the initial shock had passed, he was able to examine the thing more objectively. It appeared to be a man, or what was once a man, encased in a wax cell. Liam shuddered. He moved forward but found no relief. Another cell adjoined the man’s, this one occupied by a woman. He forced himself to keep moving forward, passing cell after cell.

He glanced over at the Shadow Queen again. He could see her side profile now. That’s when he noticed it on the other side of the cavern, cell after cell after cell stretching up as high he could see. They were in a hexagonal shape, and seeing it from a distance he knew what it looked like—a beehive. He shuddered. That was a lot of dead people!

Liam had seen enough. He couldn’t examine every cell to see if Kami’s grandmother was one of the dead. Yasmin had shown him a picture of Neina so he could identify her. But if he left now, he knew the others would insist on coming in to see for themselves if she was alive.

Suddenly, the placid wax lake began to churn. The Shadow Queen’s chanting rose and increased in intensity. Liam watched as the woman dropped something into the lake. In that spot, a whirlpool began to form, swirling deeper and deeper, until the walls collapsed and the vortex inverted, thrusting a stream of wax into the air like a geyser. She held the wax stream in place with her left hand, then with the other made a twisting motion, forming a glob of wax into a molten ball. She dropped her left arm, and the stream of wax sank back below the lake’s surface.

She cupped the air around the ball and continued her chants. The ball spun rapidly and began to bulge this way and that, as if it were in the hands of an invisible potter. The bulges began to be defined into shapes, thinned and elongated. The shapes became features, growing more and more refined until at last the spinning stopped, and Liam could see the ball had transformed into a creature of some sort.

The sculpted creature gently lowered into the Shadow Queen’s hands. She turned and strode toward the far wall, where a blazing wall of flames illuminated the space. She set the sculpture on a stone altar, then began those eerie chants again. The light behind the sculpture cast a large shadow on the cave wall.

Liam studied the stout body, the slender neck, and the long snout trying to make out what it was. Then she turned the sculpture, and he gasped. She was creating a shadow dragon. There was no doubt. It had a wingspan that stretched at least twelve feet in its shadowy form.

He watched in horrified fascination as the shadow grew darker and darker, then burst in pieces. Like hundreds of tiny bats, the dark shapes flew from the wall and swirled and twisted around each other until they compressed into the shadowy form of a dragon. What had Chris suspected? That the shadow creatures were made of not one shadow, but many? He had been right.

The dragon pawed the ground and roared. Liam felt a painful pressure in his ears and clamped his hands over them as the sound echoed through the cave. The woman stepped forward, holding her hand out to the creature. At her waist, a whip was tucked into her belt. Liam wondered if she would use the whip on the creature. Did shadow creatures even have a concept of pain?

But it appeared she didn’t need the whip. She was now petting the creature and speaking softly into its ear. The animal seemed mesmerized by her voice and had calmed. She stepped back, walked to the cells, and pushed something. He heard a grinding sound as a cell on the end extended forward, then released its contents. The wax contents fell about twenty feet and shattered as it hit the ground, leaving a corpse lying in a pile of wax debris. The creature leaped to the body. Liam heard a sickening crunch of bones as it tore into it. He turned away, nauseated, and when he dared look back a couple minutes later, all that remained was a bloodstain. The creature and the woman were gone.

His eyes skimmed around the lake and he spotted them. The dragon and the woman were walking up a ramp. When it reached the path, the dragon stationed itself in the entrance where Liam had entered. The woman followed the creature up the ramp, but instead of turning to the right, she turned left. She was headed in Liam’s direction.

He scrambled back into the shadows and froze. If she saw him, he would likely end up in a cell like the others. He could try to move ahead. Maybe if he stayed far enough ahead, she wouldn’t see him. Then again, she might spot him, even if he did stick to the shadows. It might be better to stay put until she passed. If that shadow creature moved on soon, he could get back to the others.

Run or stay—he had to decide. He flattened himself against the boulder. Stay. But if the woman happened to turn as she passed him, he would be in plain sight. He better move. He peered around the boulder again. The Shadow Queen had picked up her pace and was nearing his hiding spot. It was too late to move now.

Liam crouched down, covering his head with his hood, hoping the darkness would give him sufficient cover. He heard her footsteps nearing, coming closer and closer. He held his breath, put his head down, and waited for the footsteps to stop, for him to be hauled out of the shadows and tossed to the shadow creature.

The footsteps never varied as they came close and passed. Liam sighed in relief and looked up to see her receding form. His eyes caught a few details he had missed from a distance. A few leather pouches dangled from her waist, along with a large blood-red amulet in the shape of a knot.

Her fingernails were long, ragged, and dirt encrusted. It seemed odd to Liam that her fingernails should be so nasty, considering the beauty of her face and form and the neatness of her clothing. But these were the only fleeting impressions he had as she passed.

He would wait, watch until she was out of sight and then report to the others. He leaned back against the boulder, occasionally looking back at the dragon guarding the entrance. After twenty minutes, he gave up. The shadow creature was sprawled on the ground, resting. It didn’t look like it was going anywhere soon.

Liam stood up and stretched. He didn’t have a plan beyond going out the same way he came, but that seemed impossible unless the shadow dragon left. He’d seen the way it had torn into that corpse, and he had no desire to be the second course. Liam was in a bind all right, trapped between a shadow creature and its creator.

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This dedication goes out to an awesome reader @SforSoha whose favorite character in Born of Shadow is Kami. Check out her and her cool book "The Imitator" by clicking on the dedication link above.