Shadow People (The Forbidden Darkness Chronicles, #2)

Thirty-Nine: Heather Hawkins

I ran over to Philip, rolling him over to see his face. The blood was all over him, but he was breathing. He smiled at me when he saw me.

"Hey," he whispered.

"Hi," I said, wiping a tear from my eye. "You're okay? Do you need a doctor or something?"

"No, I'll be fine," he said. "I just need to go lie down. Can you help me up?"

Kristen knelt down beside me, and the two of us helped him up. We threw an arm over each other's shoulder and carried him into the chill room to lie down. Kadin, Frostbite, and Hayden followed behind us.

After throwing an old, dirty sheet over the couch, we helped Philip sit down. "Thank you," he said, and grunted as he laid back. "Damn, he got me good."

"What did he do to you?" I asked. Seeing him like this hurt. His face was smashed up, but even now it looked better than it did when he first came into the room to warn us that Abaddon was there.

"I was walking around outside when he came up behind me. Knocked me to the ground." He seemed as though he was trying to remember what happened. "Then...I don't know. We walked through the house, and he led me downstairs. I don't even know how I started bleeding."

"Well, whatever it was healed up quickly," Kristen said. "You're lucky that it wasn't anything more."

I looked at Kadin, who seemed to be eyeing Philip suspiciously.

"Abaddon's gone now," I said, thinking about how good it felt to kill him. Was that a bad thing? I remembered my hands trembling as I stabbed the life out of him—the anger, the rage—and I wondered if I would ever get the image out of my mind. We all still had black ooze all over us, and it smelled horrid. Like death.

"We should probably all get washed up," Kristen said. "I'll go get the shower upstairs ready. Hayden, you can shower in the one down here."

"Okay," Hayden said. He was clearly as traumatized as me.

"I'll be right back," Kristen said and left the room.

I walked over to Kadin and stood beside him. "Thank you," I whispered. "For everything. I really don't think I can thank you enough."

"Don't worry about it," Kadin said. "I wanted that guy dead just as much as you did."

I nodded, but wasn't sure if I was supposed to feel any better. "Do you think he really deserved death?"

"My guess?" Kadin said. "I think he was long gone. After thousands of years of being a Shadow Person, there was no hope for him. Whatever God is—he probably wasn't very happy with Abaddon's decisions. He never would have entered Paradise again unless it was to destroy it."

"Do you think there's more out there?" I asked. "Shadow People, I mean."

"It's possible. I wouldn't say no completely. The world is big. There might be more, there might not. We can't put it passed the Darkness to have more."

A thought suddenly occurred to me. "Hey, the Darkness never attacked us."

Kadin seemed to realize this, too. "You're right. It didn't."

"Does this mean that someone else has it?" I asked. There was no way that could be true. The only other person down in Majlis al Jinn was—

"Ash," Kadin said, sounding surprised. "Damn it!"

"What is it?" Hayden asked from the other side of the room.

"Ash has the Darkness," Kadin said. "It was never Abaddon. It was freaking Ash!"