Shadow of the Sun Read online

CHAPTER 2: DARKNESS

  Even though the coffee was cold, I continued to drink it while staring into oblivion. The events of last night swam in my head, and I was nervous about going back down to the lab. Would those dead bodies still be dead? Or would there be three humans—supernatural beings?—standing in there waiting for me?

  The door to my office flew open and slammed against the wall, causing one of my photos to rotate sideways. Sally backed in with my dry cleaning and a large box in her hands. As she struggled to bring it all to my desk, I sprang forward to relieve her of her burden. I wasn’t a complete jerk, contrary to Sally’s belief. She hung my clothes in the closet as I set the box on my desk.

  “Thank you,” I said dismissively.

  “Yeah, no problem,” Sally answered bitterly, smacking her lips in an irritating fashion.

  “Dr. Moretti,” I corrected for her benefit. What could I say? I was in a vindictive mood, and she was begging me to play this game with her. Unfortunately for her, I always win.

  “No problem, Dr. Moretti,” she growled, then slammed the door behind her. She must have fumed the whole way to the post office. I smiled at the thought.

  Forgetting the box, I locked my office door and went straight for the clean clothes. I grabbed the first business suit in sight and headed toward my bathroom. Because of the many nights I ended up staying here to perform research, the director was kind enough to have a shower unit installed at the office. It was either that or they moved the lab to my house, which was not an option as far as I was concerned. Luckily for me, there weren’t many other people willing to do this job; of those that were, few had the credentials or the patience to study both cellular and molecular physiology and biomedical sciences. Ergo, a bathroom. I earned it, simple as that.

  The hot water ran down my back, which helped to calm my hyperactive nerves. It was difficult to be completely terrified about what was downstairs in the lab. The only motivation behind applying for this post was the prospect of discovering something not of this world, or even better, something so ancient and mystifying my life would find some definitive significance. My sister Jenna had thought I was absolutely nuts.

  “This isn’t about your parents, is it?” Jenna asked me.

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, I would understand more if it were. The mysterious circumstances of your appearance were strange enough.”

  I sighed and ignored her talk of my biological parents who had abandoned me and never came back to claim me. “My parents are the same as yours,” I told her flatly.

  “I know. Our relationship goes beyond blood.” She hugged me, and I hated the fact she felt the need to reassure me. Her past wasn’t any better. “I was just happy to have a sister when they adopted you,” she admitted.

  I knew she loved me, and I loved her too. She was right: our relationship went far beyond any type of blood link.

  I was five when my adoptive parents first came across me. My memory was gone, and they never really told me the circumstances or what had happened. They said it was probably best I didn’t remember. Many psychologists claimed it could have been something so tragic my subconscious refused to remember it. Retrograde Amnesia was what they called it. I had made peace with my diagnosis, but I still wanted an explanation as to why my parents abandoned me. Was I really so terrible?

  “That place doesn’t hold the answers,” Jenna had said to me one day after she caught me trying to find out about my past through Zelko Corp’s wealth of knowledge. “You’re just going to drive yourself mad.”

  We had agreed to disagree, but now I was beginning to wonder if I really was going mad. I didn’t believe in things that went bump in the night, but I wanted to. That was why I had taken the job at Zelko Corp. They offered me something other companies couldn’t: the opportunity to find the supernatural and get paid doing it. There have been weird and unexplained things I’ve come across, but nothing yet that really changed my world. Nonetheless, I never, ever, thought I would come across something as paranormal as this.

  My whole body felt extremely shaky as I grabbed the soap off the dish and lathered up. As I washed, a strange feeling wrapped itself around me like a vine and sent something peculiar through my throbbing veins. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I wanted to unseal the room below and visit the undying creatures, which was a strange sensation considering how frightened I’d been only hours before. Were the creatures really undying, though? Or was there some scientific explanation for the whole incident? I needed to pull it together. It was paramount I forget these deviant desires that gradually leaked into my brain.

  Rotating the water tap off, the sensation came back with a vengeance and intensified the escalating compulsion to descend to the Fishbowl and discover what secrets the wooden boxes concealed. What was wrong with me? My body craved to unearth the treasure hidden below. That was what this discovery amounted to: a pile of knowledge so rich it made my head swim with the possible scientific findings. I just needed to breathe. Calm down. Resist the urge.

  What would Jenna say now?

  Wiping fog from the mirror, I looked at the wet tangled mess on my head. Though my family praised me for my locks, I never understood their love for my loose, brown, natural curls. They were nothing but a pain. Couldn’t my hair make up its mind to be straight or curly? Honestly, this should have been the least of my worries all things considered.

  I dressed and dried my hair. As I brushed my hair, a soft, rhythmic noise came from my office, like paper being printed from my computer. In the mirror, my sea-green eyes dilated in alarm. Why did the sound seem so sinister? My heart made a plunge-dive through my chest as an odd creeping sensation found its way to the pit of my stomach. Another noise. Panic shot through me. In my head, I was replaying the scene where I had purposefully locked my office door. Maybe it was my imagination? Why did I feel like I was in some awful horror movie?

  Hastily, I dressed and dashed across the black and white tiled floor. I put my ear against the door like it was a large telephone receiver. Silence greeted me.

  I held my breath and tried to slow my speeding heart as I cautiously pulled the door open, turning the handle at a measured pace so it wouldn’t make a single sound. I glanced through the minuscule gap. The office was vacant. I breathed a deep sigh of relief before I pushed the door fully open.

  I inspected my desk to find that nothing was displaced or tampered with, and the printer tray was empty. Even though things appeared to be orderly, my gut screamed for me to leave. To advance down the stairs to the figures in the three wooden boxes. I was annoyed at this excessive longing, but no matter what every second that elapsed compelled me seek out the bodies.

  I first ascertained that the door was still locked, just to be sure. My tense posture deflated at this discovery. So I had been alone. When had I become so paranoid? My imagination was playing barbaric tricks on me. For a moment I had to remind myself why I chose to work here.

  Circling around, my gaze landed on the box Sally had placed on my desk. The top was shredded. I stopped dead. My breath caught in my throat as I inched closer, eyes darting wildly around the office. Maybe it just hadn’t been securely fastened in the first place?

  Who are you trying to convince?

  It didn’t look as though someone had cut the tape; it was as if someone had punched a hole through it or something had exploded from the inside. I grabbed the box cutter off my desk, to use either as a tool to open the box further or as a weapon in case of an intruder . . . or possibly something else. The paranoia was becoming familiar. Unusual for a supernatural specialist, but this seemed to be an excellent day for lines to blur between reality and fantasy. Everything I had ever known was being thrown into doubt and uncertainty.

  Isn’t this what you wanted? Divine intervention?

  As the goose bumps rose on my skin, my body disagreed with my thoughts.

  My trembling hand reached out to sever the rest of the tape. A strange feeling of foreboding hit suddenly,
and a wave of piercing cold broke over me. After flipping the cardboard flaps away, my gaze dove deep into the depths of the box. There was a small, ancient-looking chest inside. The lid was askew, fractured, and torn off its hinges. I speculated briefly. Was this how it was received, or did something happen to it while I was in the shower?

  The room grew perceptibly darker. Before I had the opportunity to look up at the lights, I was slammed against the ground. My head smacked against the floor, and the box cutter slid several feet away. Then it was dark.

  Now I didn’t feel so dumb for being paranoid.

  I stared through the haze of pain from my head. The lamplight in my office barely penetrated through the black force surrounding me. Besides the darkness, a deep-red mixture of blood filled my vision. Whatever it was, the blackness, like a shadowy mist, gradually wrapped snugly around my body, warping and evolving as if it were a ghost. I tried to scream, but the shadow smothered my voice. My heart beat out a jagged rhythm as the blood pumped through my veins, burning like liquid fire.

  A tall inky-colored creature emerged from the blackness, appearing momentarily unfocused before he set his eyes upon me. Everything was abruptly in startling clarity. His eyes were ablaze with fire and staring right into mine. I couldn’t look away, hypnotized. I’d take the bodies downstairs any day, I thought stupidly, realizing the situation was not going to have any sort of a happy ending.

  “Don’t wake them,” the burning-eyed thing hissed, hostile and issuing a clear warning. I tried to recoil at the steely note in his tone, but he only held me tighter in the blackness.

  My lips parted to speak, but no noise would surface. The creature bore down into my eyes with his. He made a movement with his hand, granting me my wish to speak.

  “Who?” I asked, choked. My heart pounded so profoundly I was surprised it didn’t explode from my chest. Please let this be a nightmare.

  “The angels,” he said matter-of-factly. His eyes flashed with a fiery heat as he leaned over me. His whole body looked chiseled from a large piece of charcoal. His hair was shaggy and black, though the only feature I seemed able to look at was his blazing eyes, like firestorms trying to escape his body.

  “Angels?” I squeaked. My head spun as the darkness suffocated me. I choked on the air. The creature tightened his grip on me, though his hands never left his side. He controlled and manipulated the dark cloud.

  “Bury them in the Earth where they belong.” His voice was smooth and calculating.

  “The angels?” I repeated like an idiot. Maybe this was just a ghastly dream. Wake up, I shouted in my head. Wake up now!

  No luck.

  “Yes,” he said coldly, though the air in the room blazed with heat.

  There was an explosion of sound, and I was swept up in windstorm. Papers flew off my desk and spun wildly around my head, the computer crashed to the ground, sparking, and chairs flipped over. My favorite black-and-white photographs crashed to the ground, and the glass shattered. The box that held the ancient artifact flew across the office, slammed into the wall, and landed with a thud on the floor. Everything twirled wildly around me, inducing vertigo.

  As if being shaken from a dream, which I desperately hoped was the case, the door handle to my office jiggled. The darkness disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a trail of destruction. I fervently thanked all the gods known and unknown for that door handle jiggle.

  Breathing heavily, my mind oscillated between each of the events that had just unfolded. To my great relief, and surprise, I was alive. Instantly I analyzed every word the creature had said. Don’t wake them . . . the angels. I lay my head against the side of my desk, exhausted. Of course you wouldn’t be resigned from the unsolvable mystery, I chided myself angrily. Seize the day or the revelation. You know, just grab it by the horns. How many hours does one person have to be awake before they go crazy? You’ve completely lost your mind, I decided.

  “Gabriella?” The voice gave me a start of surprise. “Is everything all right?” It was the director, Darren. Concern was obvious in his tone. “I received your urgent message. Will you unlock the door?”

  My mind whirled as I caught my breath.

  Darren knocked on the door again. “Gabriella?” His voice heightened a little, his anxiety peaking.

  I realized I hadn’t answered him yet. “Yes, I’m fine,” I said evasively as I pulled myself to my feet and walked over to unlock the door.

  Darren was about six feet tall and roughly forty years old. We had worked together at Zelko Corp. for the last five years, and never once had I sent him an urgent message of any kind. His dark, apprehensive eyes looked over me, noticing my distress. He pulled his hand through his thick dark hair as his eyes roamed over my shoulder and into my office. Curiosity flashed across his face, and then I realized I was an idiot, which seemed to be the theme for the day. The room was torn apart, and now here was Darren to see the disaster. How was I going to explain this one?

  Um, this creature came out of the box? Nope, that definitely wouldn’t go over well, unless I wanted to be hospitalized.

  My heart had barely slowed, but started to pound like a drum through my chest again. When I glanced over my shoulder, ready to explain, my office was just how I had left it before taking a shower. Darren’s eyes had been focused upon the sealed box on my desk. Everything else was orderly. My papers were in their usual neat piles and folders, the photos on the wall were straight, the filing cabinets upright, and the computer screensaver that said “Zelko Corporation” still bounced from one side of the monitor to the other, as if the mouse had never been moved. Only moments before, I had seen that computer crash to the ground and short circuit.

  My jaw hit the floor. I really was losing my mind.