SHADOWS OF THE BLOODLINE

CHAPTER 4

 The Library Ghost

WILDER

The New Haven Library closed at nine, but I knew how to get in through the basement window. I'd been doing it for two years and nobody had caught me yet.

The librarians probably knew someone was breaking in because I always left things slightly different from I found them, but they never said anything.

I was high when I climbed through the window. I started taking drugs to take the edge off the constant noise in my head. My mom was said to have extrasensory perception, and I inherited it, having intense visions that came with crippling migraines. The weed helped with the visions and my dealer Rune, had good stuff.

The back corner of the basement was where they kept really old books, the ones nobody checked out anymore because they were falling apart or written in languages most people didn't read.

I called it the magical section, but not because the library labeled it that way. I called it that because every book I pulled from those shelves gave me visions. I'd been having them since I was eight, right after my parents died in the car crash. At first I thought I was going crazy, but then I realized the visions only happened when I touched certain books or read certain words.

I grabbed my usual spot on the floor between two tall shelves and pulled out my flashlight. There's a book I've been reading for the past week. The title was in Latin or maybe Greek, I couldn't tell, but the pages inside had drawings of people doing impossible things like throwing fire and moving objects without touching them.

Magic.

I opened the book to where I'd left off and started reading. The text was in English this time which made things easier. It talked about bloodlines, families who could control the elements.

I used my fingers to trace the words, and then my head whipped back.

It happened so fast I didn't have time to prepare. One second I was reading words on a page, and the next second I was somewhere else. I was standing in a field that stretched till the horizons.

The sky above me was black, but not the normal night black. This was darker.

Five figures stood in a circle in the middle of the field. They were dressed in old-fashioned clothes, robes that looked like they came from medieval times or something. Each of them had their hands raised and colored light poured from their palms.

The darkness above them was alive. It writhed like a snake and had tendrils, which it used to reach down towards the five figures.

One of the figures screamed and threw her white light at the darkness. The tendril that had been reaching for her dissolved but three more took its place.

"We can't hold it," someone shouted. A man with green light pouring from his hands. "The barrier won't last."

"It has to," another voice said. This one belonged to a young guy maybe in his twenties. His light was blue, and it wrapped around the others like a shield. "We didn't come this far to fail now."

The darkness pushed harder, and I saw that the five figures were shaking at their knees, trying to withhold its power.

Then the woman with the black light stopped fighting and opened her arms wide. The darkness rushed toward her and she let it in. Her scream echoed across the field and I felt it in my bones.

The other four did the same thing. They stopped resisting and became vessels. The darkness filled them until their bodies couldn't hold any more.

"Seal it," the white light man gasped. "Seal it now before we lose ourselves."

They joined hands. The glow around them intensified until I had to look away. When I looked back they were gone. Just five stone markers where they'd been standing.

The field faded.

I was back in the library basement, gasping for air. My hands were shaking so hard I dropped the book. Sweat poured down my face even though the basement was freezing. I could still smell smoke from the vision.

This had been different from my other visions. It felt...urgent.

I pressed my back against the shelf and tried to steady my breathing. My heart hammered against my ribs. The visions had been getting stronger lately.

My grandmother thought I was just smoking too much weed. She was probably right but I couldn't stop. The visions were the only thing that made me feel less alone. When I was in them, I wasn't Wilder Ash, the orphan who lived with his grandmother in a cramped apartment above a bookstore. I reached for the book I'd dropped, and that was when I noticed the shadows.

These were not like normal shadows that stayed in one place unless the light changed. These were crawling across the floor toward me. It had those black tendrils that looked exactly like the darkness from my vision.

My throat closed up. I scrambled backward but the shelves blocked me.

"No," I whispered. "This has to be another vision. It has to be."

But it felt real. The temperature dropped, and I started to shiver. One of the tendrils reached for my ankle. Before I could utter a scream, fire erupted between us.

A wall of flames shot up from the concrete floor and cut off the shadows. They shrieked and pulled back. The sound made my ears ring. I covered them with my hands and pressed myself harder against the shelf.

A man walked through the fire like he couldn't feel how scalding hot it was against my skin. His hands were literally on fire. I blinked twice to refocus but it didn't change the fact that his actual hands were burning.

"Wilder Ash," he said, his voice a strange echo. "Your bloodline calls."

I couldn't speak as I was rooted to the spot, my heart threatening to bust out of my chest.

"You've been having visions your whole life," the man continued. He looked at the book on the floor between us. "You've been reading about things you thought were just stories. But they're not stories, Wilder. They're history. Your history."

"Who are you?" I pressed my back against the shelf as he came closer.

"My name is Aeris. I'm here because the darkness you saw in your vision is coming back. You're one of five people who can stop it." He placed his hand on my shoulder and behind him, I could see the shadows regrouping for another attack.

"I don't understand," I stuttered.

"You will," Aeris replied. "But right now you need to run. Your powers are waking up and you don't know how to control them yet. The shadows can sense that. They'll try to corrupt you before you become a threat."

"What powers? I don't have powers."

The shadows lunged.

Aeris threw more fire, but there were too many of them. They split into multiple tendrils and came at us from different directions. One of them got past his flames and reached for me.

Something inside me snapped.

It felt like falling backward into cold water. My whole body went numb and the world shifted. The shadow's tendril passed right through my chest like I wasn't even there. I looked down and saw that my hands were transparent. I could see through them to the floor below.

"What's happening to me?" I screamed.

But my voice sounded distant, like I was floating underwater.

The floor disappeared.

I realized that I was falling through it. I was falling but also floating. My body had no weight. As I fell through the building's concrete, sand and pipes, strange voices whispered fiercely at me.

*Join us.*

*Belong to us.*

*We see your pain.*

*We can end it.*

*You don't have to be alone anymore.*

I pushed back against the whispers and before I knew it, I was solid again. The world snapped into focus and I slammed into the ground, and I coughed as air was knocked out of my lungs.

I was in the library basement again. Aeris stood over me with his flames forming a protective circle. The shadows were nowhere to be found.

"What was that?" I gasped.

"Your shadow powers," Aeris said. He helped me to my feet. "You became invisible. It's one of your bloodline's abilities."

I looked at my hands. They were solid now but I could still remember what it felt like to be nothing.

"The whispers," I said. "They wanted me to join them." I didn't know this man, but all have ever done since he came here was save me, so I figured that I could trust him.

Aeris's expression darkened. "That's Grimfall. It's the darkness from your vision. It's been trapped for five hundred years, but the barrier is failing. When it breaks completely, everyone will hear those whispers. Most of them won't be strong enough to resist, when they give in to it, he makes them mindless thralls."

He pulled a card from his jacket and pressed it into my palm.

"Be at this address tomorrow night by eight o'clock. There are four others like you. I know you have questions, and you'll find the answers there. Hopefully, together you all will get a chance."

I flipped the card suspiciously in my hands. "A chance at what?"

"At the stopping of the end of the world."