Shadow Summoner: Choronzon Chronicles Book One Read online

  Shadow Summoner

  Choronzon Chronicles Book One

  Tess Adair

  Copyright © 2018 by Tess Adair

  All rights reserved. Published by Tower Park Press.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with the written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to [email protected].

  Cover designed by Ravven (www.ravven.com)

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)

  Published in the United States by Tower Park Press

  ISBN: 978-0-9977500-0-3

  If you would like to get access to free content and be notified when Tess Adair’s next novel is released, please sign up for her mailing list by clicking here: http://eepurl.com/diMmSv

  Table of Contents

  Origins

  Chapter 1: Pest Control

  Chapter 2: Coming of Age for the Cursed

  Chapter 3: Elimination Rounds

  Chapter 4: Practical Revenge

  Chapter 5: Callous and Bored

  Chapter 6: Full of Surprises

  Chapter 7: Power Balance

  Chapter 8: Invisible Forces

  Chapter 9: After the Storm

  About the Author

  Origins

  My father always told me I was born with my eyes open. It was a story he liked to repeat from time to time, like a favorite party anecdote—only he couldn’t relate it in company. This story was private. Creation myths, they’re called.

  He told me the myth because he thought I needed it. He thought I sensed that I was wrong somehow, and I needed an explanation. He used to bring out the photo albums that archived my early years—picture after picture of a small, oddly still child, dark eyes wide and unblinking. I’m never smiling in those pictures, either alone or in a group. Every few pages, the books are punctuated by entire class portraits. In every one, a girl with dark eyes and tied-back dark hair stands a little apart from the other children—or perhaps they stand apart from her—and stares with those wide eyes at the camera.

  He need not have bothered with the myth. Every child thinks they’re a little different—it’s our earliest solipsistic impulse. It’s so human. To feel lost is to feel alive; we’re a species of solipsists. Big human brains are a mistake of evolution—too big to find satisfaction in small lonely lives.

  And anyway, when I was that young, I never suspected a thing. I just didn’t like to get my picture taken. I found cameras innately suspicious. Why would anyone need an image of me? I quietly held the belief that their purposes were nefarious, and I expressed it by refusing to obey any photographer’s request for a smile.

  I never thought anything was wrong with me. He could have just told me the truth. I think about that sometimes. What would I have done differently, had I known?

  When she was ten years old, they went on a road trip to see her aunt. Charles Logan loved road trips. He liked to think of himself as something of a nomad, even though they never moved anywhere. He’d called the estate his home base since before she was born, but they went on trips all the time. When she was ten, they went to see her aunt at Other Side, and they stopped at a gas station.

  The rain was hard against the window, and the sky was so dark she could hardly tell it was day. Charles pulled to a stop near one of the pumps, set the brake, and turned to her.

  “Do you need to go to the restroom?”

  She shook her head, staring sullenly.

  “All right. I’m going to go inside, and I might be a few minutes.” He turned down the edges of his mouth, his best attempt at looking stern and imposing. “You will stay in the car. You will not wander off, under any circumstances.”

  She didn’t nod this time. She only stared. Charles sighed and went inside.

  Years later, when she tried to recall the memory in full, the only thing she could be sure of was the sound of the rain. She remembered, vaguely, reading a book about another world, but she couldn’t remember the book or the world. And she remembered thinking she could see something, about thirty feet ahead of her. Something out in the rain.

  Did she see something? It was gone so fast.

  She had to wait in the car. She looked over at the store inside the gas station, checking for her father’s outline. He would know what to do, if anything was to be done—he was good at that. As she watched, he disappeared behind the bathroom door.

  Then, all of a sudden, the rain seemed to get quieter, almost silent. She glanced out the windshield ahead of her, but it looked as heavy as ever. It was only the sound that had changed.

  She told herself to ignore it. To go back to her book. Back to her second world.

  But then, again, she saw something. Just for a moment, just a flash. Something flashed in front of her.

  The rain was definitely quieter now. In fact, she could barely hear it. She could barely hear anything. It was almost as though someone had shut a door somewhere, and it had sealed her off from the auditory world.

  Then, at the back of her brain, she felt the slightest suggestion.

  Come find me.

  It was similar to hearing a voice, only she heard nothing. Instead she felt it. She could feel, in the back of her mind, a presence trying to speak to her.

  She also felt, somehow, that she wasn’t supposed to know it was there. She could feel the voice, but the voice didn’t know that. The voice thought it left no trace.

  She was supposed to come outside. She was not supposed to know that someone had whispered it to her first.

  Come find me.

  The sound of the rain came back. She glanced back inside the gas station, but her father hadn’t come out yet. When she looked down, she found that her hand already hovered over the door handle. She pulled it back, to make sure she could. Then she pressed down on it and stepped outside.

  Even zipped up in her rain coat with the hood fully secured over her head, she felt the force of the wet cold outside. She closed her door audibly and walked forward, absolutely certain that if she only went far enough, she would see what she had already seen—the brief flash in the storm.

  After a moment, she realized she was coming up on the broad side of an eighteen wheeler truck. The rain was so thick she hadn’t seen it before. Now she could make out the outline, the edges, and the wavering shadow on the side.

  The shadow? What shadow? There was no shadow.

  Only there was. She blinked, and it was gone. Had never been. She blinked again and it returned. She stopped walking, closed her eyes with purpose, and took on a stern tone inside her own head.

  The shadow is real. You see the shadow.

  She opened her eyes again.

  She could see the shadow. Only it wasn’t a shadow—it looked like a man. An old, pale, shriveled man, shoulders slumped forward and curling inward inside a tattered trench coat. She couldn’t quite make out his face, but what she could see of it looked crumpled somehow. The longer she looked, the more pronounced his deformity became.

  When he grinned, his mouth revealed a deep black hole. No light escaped. As she gazed at it, a thought came to her like something unbidden, like it had been planted there by someone else: nothing escapes.

  The grinning hole tilted slowly to the side.

  Come find me.

  She looked it straight on, but she sensed that it didn’t quite look back at her—its eyes moved in her direction, but only took in her form. It never fixated on her
face.

  It didn’t know yet that she could see it, too.

  Come find me.

  She knew she was supposed to keep walking. It wanted her to. She was more vulnerable if she kept walking. Harder to help.

  She planted her feet. She allowed her gaze to go slack, to drift aimlessly around ahead of her, keeping it in her sights but not pinning it down. She couldn’t let it know that she knew.

  Come find me!

  Impatience seeped through the voice now. The misshapen man took a step forward, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  How quickly could it move? It took another slow step, halting and awkward. Was it still finding its footing? Or was its hesitance some new kind of trick?

  Come find me.

  How limited was its coercion? How broad?

  Come find me.

  It took two more halting steps, and she tensed invisibly. She was ready.

  With another flash, the misshapen man closed all the space between them, launching himself at her in full attack.

  Years after this moment, she would remember that she raised her crossed arms over her face and launched herself right back at him.

  Apart from that, she wouldn’t be able to remember much. Her father came outside and screamed some nonsense words into the air, and she saw the gray sky turn red with fire, and then the fire was gone. And so was the misshapen man.

  She bore no signs of an attack. No bruises, no abrasions, no broken skin. Her father turned her arms over in his hands, checking to make sure when she told him she wasn’t hurt. Then he told her to get back in the car.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  Charles Logan said nothing. He turned the key over, and the engine came to life. Did he think if he ignored her, she would forget?

  “What was that?”

  “It wasn’t much,” he answered gruffly. “If this rain doesn’t let up, we’re going to be late getting into Other Side.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. He ignored her and drove.

  She turned her arms over, trying to see them on all sides.

  How could she be unhurt?

  She remembered throwing up her arms, and she remembered feeling something, some kind of incredible pain bursting through her forearms, from her wrists to her elbows. Had he struck her? What else could it have been? But her arms looked perfect now—completely unmarred. Had she imagined it all?

  Later that night, she dreamed of monsters. Or, at least, she thought she did. She dreamed that she walked through a crowd of hooded creatures, each one facing away from her. The closer she got to any one, the more certain she became that it was a monster. But when she reached it, she spun it around to face her.

  And instead of a monster’s face, she saw her own.

  The whole thing was quite enough to make her question her solipsism.

  Chapter 1: Pest Control

  H. C. Logan opened her eyes onto a room she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t the first time. Rolling over to her side, she swung her arm over the edge of the bed until she found the nearest phone. One button click—10:47am. She felt a stab of confusion, followed immediately by annoyance. Hadn’t she set an alarm the night before?

  Then she heard it. The faintest sound, a little meep. Barely audible. She pushed herself to standing and followed it over to the far end of the room. There, on the floor, a little light blinked through the fabric of her pants. She reached down and clicked her phone off, irritated but not surprised to see that her battery was almost depleted: the alarm had been going off for over three hours.

  With a sigh, she pulled her pants back on, then started a search for her shirt. A solid black bra hung draped over a lamp in the corner of the room—had she thrown it? She walked over and grabbed it, watching the straps slide over the unnatural-looking markings on her arms. Only the inscription inside her left elbow was actually artificial, but fortunately for her, that was the one most people asked about. She made one more sweep of the room and finally located her shirt, then slipped it on and covered up most of the markings entirely. She glanced back at the bed—her companion slept soundly. As her gaze briefly lingered, his body shifted, causing the blanket to slide softly off his chest. For a moment, she contemplated what it might be like to rouse him for another round. But she quickly dismissed the thought. She had other things to do.

  Once she’d checked her fully clothed appearance in the mirror to make sure she looked roughly civilized, she slid out and relocked the door, then scampered down the stairs.

  At the bottom, she clicked her phone on and redialed the last number called, hoping her battery would hold out. She listened to it ring twice, then heard a female voice answer.

  “Hi, Miss Humphrey? This is Logan. Yes, the private contractor. Listen, I’m calling to let you know that due to unforeseeable circumstances, I’m going to be about an hour late. Oh no, I’m fine. I, uh…to be honest, I took the wrong exit. Well, I figured it out eventually, and I’m on the right path now. Yes, I will see you then. Ciao.”

  With that out of the way, she took a sweeping survey of the street around her, trying to get her bearings. She remembered that she’d left her bike at the bar because her companion the previous evening only lived a few blocks away. After a moment, it clicked into place. She headed south.

  There, about a block and a half down, she found the bar. At the far end of the miniscule parking lot, she spotted her neon green Kawasaki Ninja. Good. At least no one had stolen it. Clearly the thieves in Ohio didn’t appreciate a good bike when they saw one.

  She crossed the lot and fished her keys out of her pocket, then pushed the small one into a lock just underneath the back end of the seat. The seat swung up, revealing a hidden storage compartment, and her messenger bag. Propelled by a sudden stab of suspicion, she pulled open the bag to check on the contents—and found her sealed cedar case of tools right where she’d left it. She closed the bag again. Glancing up, she scanned the street before her for a sign of coffee. She didn’t have to look far. Making sure to close the compartment until it clicked shut, she took her bag and strode across the street, where a small café was in full swing.

  She needed to make sure she looked presentable and clean, and she needed caffeine. After that, she had a job to do.

  The sun still shone a little brighter than she liked when she exited the café twenty minutes later, having downed three espressos in quick succession while her phone charged underneath a table. She couldn’t explain why, but for some reason sunny days had always made her nervous. She preferred a slate-gray sky—the kind that endlessly promised rain but never delivered. Sunny days were too complacent, too cheerful. Sunny days allowed people to lie.

  She returned to her Ninja, put her bag back in its hole, slipped on her jacket, and unstrapped her helmet from the back. When she’d first started riding, she hadn’t liked the helmets. She’d found them cumbersome, uncomfortable, and a little dorky. But the more she rode, the fonder she became of them. The helmet afforded her something that nothing else ever had—anonymity. Inside it, she became unrecognizable and undifferentiated. It helped, of course, that her thick leather jacket happened to disguise most curves in her body, and to exaggerate her shoulders ever so slightly. In the jacket and helmet, speeding down an open road, she felt more like an extension of the motorcycle than a separate organic being.

  Aside from that, she’d once been thrown from the bike and over a nearby fence. She liked the helmet a lot more after that.

  Just as she swung her leg over the side, the phone in her pocket emitted a shrill ring. She pulled it out to check the screen. Knatt. She sighed and started the engine, debating setting her phone to silent and ignoring him for a while. But the ring of the phone felt far more pressing in her hand than it had in the jacket. If only she hadn’t pulled it out at all.

  “Good morning,” she said as she answered the phone, trying to sound like a happier, more prepared version of herself. Trying to sound cheerful, like the sun wanted her to be.

  His
response fell short of cheerful.

  “You’re late, aren’t you?” His clipped British accent lent an extra note of condescension to his restrained annoyance.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The fact that it is currently 11:20am in your time zone, and yet you are not currently located at the private residence of Miss Adelaide Humphrey, our client.”

  “And how do you know that I’m not currently located at the private residence of Miss Adelaide Humphrey, our client?”

  “I gave her a call two minutes ago to ask her, and she informed me that you were not there.”

  “Well, it hurts to know that you don’t trust me, Knatt. I thought we were closer than that.”

  “I can hardly be expected to trust you, Miss Logan, if every time I look to find where you are, I discover that you are not where you are supposed to be.”

  Logan let out a quiet huff, which she hoped he couldn’t hear. Half the reason she always showed up late to these things was that she didn’t want to do them in the first place. Taking money from wealthy clients had been her father’s way of doing things. If she had her choice, she would have forgone the mundanities of paranormal nuisance in favor of bigger challenges. But Knatt had been her father’s partner, so he was used to her father’s business strategy. He expected it. He expected it of her. When she’d taken over, he’d been completely incapable of accepting any change.

  And Logan had to get used to that.

  “All right. Yes, I am not with the client yet. But I informed her ahead of time that I was going to be late, and it’s only because I got a little lost on the way to her place. She didn’t have a problem with it, and she knows when to expect me. Okay?”

  Knatt was silent for a long moment. She wondered if perhaps, at last, she’d performed acceptably. But when he spoke and she heard the tone of his voice, she knew immediately that she hoped for too much.