Chapter Club: The Shadowrunner Chapter 23
Happy Friday! I’m excited to bring you another excerpt from The Shadowrunner.
Want to start from the beginning? You can find Chapter 1 here!
Last Time
Luke is the chief police officer in a small Arizona town called Abeja
His daughter, Lucy, has magical abilities that she is keeping secret from her parents.
A Texan named Silvia Montes was murdered not far from Luke’s house. Lucy both met Silvia prior to her murder and saw the murderer on the night of the crime. She has come to call the murderer a dragon
One of Lucy’s friends, Owen Macallan, fell into a coma about a month before the start of the book. He disappeared from his hospital room while Jenni and Owen’s mom were watching him.
Sunday passed quickly, though it would have been hard for Lucy to explain exactly why that was. Both Mom and Dad were too tired to do anything other than rest and Lucy’s exhaustion from the day before had left her doing the same.
Today was Halloween, though. Mom helped her get dressed in her costume before school and Dad smiled when he came down the stairs to see them off.
“That’s quite the mantis-shrimp costume.”
Lucy smiled, the eyes of the costume, made from several different colored pipe-cleaners, bobbing up and down as she did so.
“Do you like it?”
“I do!” Dad replied, bending down to kiss her on the cheek. “Have a good day at school, and enjoy the trunk-or-treat. I’ll be at work late tonight, but I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks, Dad!” Lucy said.
She spent the school day explaining what she was to the other people in her class. While there were only two vampires, everyone else had picked easier costumes. The colors of her costume made her stand out, as did the way she had to adjust the tail of her costume every time she got up or sat down. Even so, she was almost able to forget the sensation of being watched.
At the end of the day, the sun was already turning the sky shades of pink and purple. She found Mom waiting in the long line of cars running along the side of the school and climbed into the car to go to the trunk-or-treat. She was excited; it was the first trunk-or-treat she had ever done. She had done trick-or-treating before, but she didn’t feel like doing it now with what she knew was lurking in the dark. Better to stay in a parking lot with a bunch of other people.
They pulled into the parking lot of the high school and found dozens of cars with their trunks open. Packs of kids walked up and down the rows of cars, stopping at each of the trunks in turn. Some of them were plain, but others were filled with lights and other Halloween decorations. One of them even had a smoke machine.
Lucy eagerly jumped out of the car, circling around to the driver-side door to meet her mom.
“Where should we go first?” Mom asked.
Lucy pointed at the car with the smoke machine. Mom smiled at her and said, “That’s a great choice.”
By the time they had made it down one row and part of the way down another, Lucy’s pillowcase was filled with candy. So far, no one had stuck a toothbrush or an apple in her makeshift bag, and she was happy for that.
She didn’t like that the feeling of being watched was back, and it was more intense than she had felt before. She kept looking over her shoulder, sure that there was something nearby. One time after she looked, her mom asked, “are you looking for someone?”
“I want to see if any of my friends from school are here,” she lied.
She turned back to the small group of kids in front of her, moving through one by one to get their treat from the back of the silver mini van. She focused on the feeling, trying to figure out which way it was pointing. She turned her head again, realizing that the feeling was coming from the school. Was the dragon in there?
She had been practicing for something like this. And now she could get to it first before it got to her. Surprise it. That would be something.
Lucy got her piece of candy from the mini van then turned back to her mom. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said.
“Hmm. I think the school is open. Let’s go check.”
The two of them walked over to the doors to the gym. They were propped open, but not all of the lights in the hallway were on. Lucy counted, finding that of the fourteen lights that could be on between the doors and the sign for the girl’s bathroom, only four were on.
A woman was walking out of the doors just as they crossed over the threshold. When the woman saw Mom, her eyes widened in a bright smile.
“Oh my gosh, Jenni!”
“Amber?”
This was one of Mom’s friends, Lucy thought. The two of them went in for a hug and then started chatting about everything that had happened since the last time they saw each other. It sounded like it was a couple of weeks ago. A long time to go without seeing your friend. About as long as Owen had been gone.
Sensing an opportunity, Lucy said, “I’ll meet you back here,” and then slipped off towards the bathroom. Mom let her go, too engrossed in her conversation to protest.
Lucy turned into the hallway right before the girl’s bathroom, following the weight she felt at the front of her mind. The lights here were also mostly out, leaving plenty of shadows where the dragon could be hiding. But Lucy wasn’t looking for the dragon when she glanced down the side hallways. She was looking for other people. She knew where the dragon was.
Her sense took her to the door at the end of the hallway. It wasn’t an emergency exit, so she pushed the door open and walked out onto the patch of asphalt behind the school. The sensation was strong here. Lucy glanced around, made sure no one was looking, and summoned her ghost light. It glowed teal blue in the darkness.
She could feel her heart thumping against her chest and the way her lungs didn’t want to open all the way. Was she as ready as she thought she was?
There was no turning back now. The door had clicked shut behind her. Keeping her attention on her ghost light, Lucy continued toward the sensation. It became almost unbearable next to the bleachers looking onto the track. There were trashcans chained to some of the poles holding them up, the lids long gone. Lucy peaked up over the edge of the closest one and felt that the dragon must be inside. She plunged her light into the black bag, yelping a little as she did so.
The light passed through the garbage bag, but didn’t hit any resistance. If the dragon was there, they would have been fighting already. Lucy peaked up over the side again and hit the sides of the trash can. The bag shifted a little and suddenly Lucy’s face was bathed in green light. At the bottom of the trash can, partially obscured by the folds of the black plastic, was a green version of her ghost friend.
Ignoring the garbage underneath it, Lucy reached over the edge of the trashcan and touched the green light.
Suddenly she was somewhere else, twin green ghost lights in her hands. In front of her, a wall of shadow slithered over the grass with the sound of an avalanche of sand. The air was hot and sticky, just like the air in front of the dragon. Her arms moved, but without her deciding to move them. A bolt of green light leapt from her hand into the dark.
Someone was whispering something, and Lucy realized that they were names. She would have counted them, but there was no time. The light she but not she had thrown into the dark was completely swallowed.
Now her arms moved again and a razor thin beam of light went into the heart of the beast. This was completely unlike what she had done with her own ghost light. She was watching someone else then. Someone who had a ghost light like her.
The cloud illuminated like a waking firefly. Lucy felt a rush of excitement that wasn’t hers and then a brief flash of panic. The cloud, the dragon, had opened a hole in itself so that the laser went right through it. Now the hot wind was blowing again and the dragon surrounded her in darkness.
Tingling ran up her arms. Lucy looked down at her hands and saw they were wrinkled and brown. She recognized those hands. The woman who had come to see her ghost friend!
The woman enveloped herself in a dome of green light, her knees buckling under the weight of the force above her. Lucy’s vision toppled with her. She must be looking through the woman’s eyes then.
She turned to face the street, now obscured by the monster, and unleashed a magical blast of green light. Dashing through the opening it punched the darkness, she emerged onto the sidewalk and ran through the street.
Lucy felt the woman’s heart pounding as she struggled to keep whispering as she ran. The street lamps winked out one by one as the beast chased her. The woman turned down a side-street, then stopped beneath one of the lam posts to hurl another bolt of energy into the dragon.
The light flew through the air, its glow retreating further and further away. The monster wasn’t behind her. Lucy shared in the woman’s confusion and shock as a sharp pain blossomed over her left hip.
The woman fell forward again, little bits of dirt and rock pressing into her palms as she caught herself. She stopped whispering and the green glowing around her dimmed. The hair on the back of her neck rose at the feeling of impending danger filled. The woman rolled to face her assailant, something resembling a human emerging from the night. There was an electric hiss and a flash of white light as the monster reached down to—
The image changed and now Lucy was kneeling in the dirt. There was a trowel by her right hand, a mound of pebbly dry dirt, and a shallow hole in the ground. The same woman from before placed a notebook sealed in a plastic bag into the hole, then pulled the dirt over the top of it. When she was done, the ground was completely level. No one would have known that there was a book there.
The woman looked up, revealing the back of Lucy’s elementary school. Lucy must have looked at where the woman was standing a dozen times trying to find where the odd sense was coming from.
Lucy’s mind filled with a thought that was not her own.
Find the index.
Then she was back in her own body, the green light in the trash can now gone. Lucy lowered herself back down to the pavement, her ribs hurting where the lip of the can had pressed into them.
Her mind felt like the jumbled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Where had the light gone? What had she seen? Did that mean the woman who had come to visit her was… gone? Was the index the book? When was she going to be able to find it?
She slid down the edge of the trash can to sit on the ground. That woman had seen the dragon too. And the dragon had hurt her, even though she could use her light much better than Lucy could. If she ran into the dragon, would the same thing happen?
Suddenly she was afraid. She stood and ran to the doors she had come out, but found them locked. She turned, getting ready to run around the building when the feeling that had brought her here intensified until it was unbearable. The lights to the track went out.
Someone appeared in front of her and her scream turned into a gasp when she recognized who it was.
It was Owen. His face was read and puffy, as if he had a cold. But where his eyes should have been there were only two black pools.
“Owen, what happened?”
For a moment, he didn’t respond, then he leaped toward her. Lucy summoned her ghost light in front of her and the world was filled with green light, brighter than anything she had summoned before. A shadow flew backwards towards the track and it growled in Owen’s voice. The sound caused Lucy’s light to falter. In the instant the light vanished, The thing that looked like Owen leaped back towards her.
She summoned her ghost light again and the monster howled. She focused harder this time, harder than she ever had at school. She moved the light out, chasing the monster back. She saw the mass of shadow skirt the edge of her ghost light, trying to loop back around to her. Lucy pulled the ghost light back, sending the monster careening into the middle of the courtyard between the edge of the school and the track. Lucy’s heart pounded in her ears. She felt adrenaline coursing through her.
Lucy advanced on the shadow of the monster, keeping her nose scrunched as she walked. As the light reached it, the thing that looked like Owen scrambled backward. It was almost like she were using a leaf blower against it.
She pushed the monster’s shadow to the wall, keeping the ghost light in front of her so that it couldn’t get away. When it was close to the wall, she willed the ghost light to shine brighter, pinning it there.
The monster screamed. The sound of so much pain in Owen’s voice made Lucy lose her concentration. The ghost light vanished and she felt hot wind advancing on her a moment before the monster knocked her to the ground. Her head hit the concrete and she saw stars. There was something on top of her now.
Dad had told her that if anyone hurt her, she was allowed to hurt them back. She scrunched her nose and brought the ghost light back to her, sending it straight into the heart of the shadow.
This time, when it screamed, she kept her focus. The ghost light punched a hole through the monster and Lucy brought it back around to her as the monster leapt off of her. She felt sweat beading on her temples as she stood. The monster howled as the shadow flowed back into the hole Lucy had punched. Lucy was about to push it again when the door behind her opened. The monster leapt to Lucy’s side and Lucy followed the shadow to its intended target: Mom.
She was standing in the doorway, her mouth open and her face pale. The monster was an instant away from reaching her.
Lucy shot the ghost light towards the monster, ripping a hole right through its center. She pulled the ghost light back toward her, trying to hit it one more time. The second shot only grazed the shadow, but sent it into retreat. She watched the monster fly away in a cloud of inky darkness for a moment before it became indistinguishable from the night sky. The sense that she was being watched waned in Lucy’s mind. After a few moments, it was small enough that she could completely ignore it. They were safe now.
She turned back to her mother and rubbed the back of her head. It hurt a lot, but maybe it would feel better after she went to sleep.
Mom looked back at her with a frightened look. After a moment she rushed forward and smothered Lucy in a large hug. She was crying; Lucy might have cried too, but all she felt was numb. She had driven off a monster. Not the dragon, but a monster. She had hurt it. And she had done it using her special power.
After several minutes, Mom wiped her eyes and looked into Lucy’s face. “Are you alright?”
She nodded, still numb.
“What was that?” Mom said.
“It was a monster. It looked like Owen.” She rubbed her head again. She expected to have a lump there when she went to school tomorrow.
“That… that was Owen?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy replied. Owen had been her friend, and whatever she had fought really wanted to hurt her. She didn’t think that Owen would do that.
“Come on, we’re going home,” Mom said, pulling Lucy in the direction of the parking lot. When they were back inside the car, Mom turned to her and asked, “What did you do to the monster?”
Her secret was out, but she was too tired to care.
“I used my ghost light.”
“Your… Was that the green light?”
Lucy nodded.
“How long have you been able to do that?”
“A couple weeks.”
Mom turned back to the steering wheel and turned on the car. She pulled out of the parking lot a little faster than normal, at least that’s what Lucy felt as the turns pushed her back and forth across her chair.
“Before or after Owen disappeared?” Mom asked.
“Before, but after he went to the hospital,” Lucy explained. She leaned her head on the cool glass of the car window, staring at the edge of the road as they drove.
When they stopped at a stoplight, Mom asked, “Why didn’t you tell me or Dad?”
Lucy picked her head up and turned to her mom. “I thought I would be in trouble. And then you or Dad would tell me I wasn’t allowed to do it any more and then I wouldn’t be able to help you.”
Mom looked at her, ignoring the light as it turned green. Her face was still very pale and her eyes were very wide.
“The dragon—?”
I hope you enjoyed this sneak-peak of The Shadowrunner. What did you think? Let me know by leaving a like and some of your thoughts in the comments below!