Shade and the Skinwalkers Read online

  Shade and the Skinwalkers

  Book 2 of the Shade Series

  By

  Marilyn Peake

  http://www.marilynpeake.com

  Shade and the Skinwalkers

  © Copyright, 2016, Marilyn Peake

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  Book Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design:

  http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  About the Author

  Marilyn Peake is the author of both novels and short stories. Her publications have received excellent reviews. Marilyn’s one of the contributing authors in Book: The Sequel, published by The Perseus Books Group, with one of her entries included in serialization at The Daily Beast. In addition, Marilyn has served as Editor of a number of anthologies. Her short stories have been published in seven anthologies and on the literary blog, Glass Cases.

  AWARDS: Silver Award, two Honorable Mentions and eight Finalist placements in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, two Winner and two Finalist placements in the EPPIE Awards, Winner of the Dream Realm Awards, a Finalist placement in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Book Awards, and Winner of Best Horror in the eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards.

  Author Links:

  Marilyn Peake’s website: http://www.marilynpeake.com

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  Amazon Author Page:

  http://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Peake/e/B00LZV77Q8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1437976058&sr=1-2-ent

  Follow Marilyn Peake on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marilynpeake

  Follow Marilyn Peake on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Marilyn-Peake-Author-1649249058685297/

  CHAPTER 1

  At the beginning of my senior year of high school, we moved again. As per usual, my mother was only thinking about herself, once again trying to escape her demons rather than having a final showdown with them.

  Just when I had gotten used to the big old Victorian-style house we were renting, the place where I had met my first ghost up in my attic bedroom. I had actually come to love that room. Dusty pink walls, a comfortable seat in the bay window inside one of the house turrets, even a bed with a canopy.

  This time, we moved to New Mexico. Into a trailer park in the desert outside Roswell. Yup. Roswell. The place known for its crazy tourists and UFO conventions, and all kinds of stories about visitors from outer space.

  I probably shouldn’t criticize. I’d seen ghosts. Maybe there are aliens roaming the Earth. Who knows.

  We moved into a used single-wide trailer home. My mom tried to convince me it was big because it had three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Ummm, no. My bedroom was the size of a closet.

  We brought all our stuff in a small U-Haul trailer. Everything fit. We didn’t own much. As we pulled into the trailer park, everyone stared. My heart pounded; my hands got slippery with sweat. I thought they’d probably heard of us. Heard of the crimes I had solved, heard that my mother had gotten sucked into working with the criminals, idiot that she was at times. I figured they couldn’t possibly know that ghosts had helped me solve the crimes.

  The road winding through the neighborhood was paved, but the yards were mostly dust and cacti. I hated it already.

  I kept my head down as much as possible while we moved our stuff inside. Clothes. A couple boxes of dishes. Couple boxes of books. Two mattresses. No bed frames. Boxes with sheets and blankets and towels. Boxes of art supplies, separate ones labeled Shade or Poppy (my mom’s name). Some art canvases my mom had painted. I liked the one of homeless people wearing brightly colored rags. I hated the one of me. It brought back memories of sitting on a hard wooden chair for hours every day while she tried to capture my image, her hands shaking from alcohol and drugs. She always insisted she wasn’t under the influence, but the smell of booze filling our greasy kitchen made me dizzy.

  My mom had gotten a couple of mattresses on sale dirt cheap before we moved. We carried my mattress into my room and threw it down on the floor. I dug in the box of bedclothes until I found the sky-blue sheets with cloud patterns on them, a blanket and a quilt. I pushed my box of books into my room, carried in my computer and slammed the door.

  I heard my mom shouting, “Shade! Shade! You’re not shutting yourself up in your room already, are you?”

  Bam! You win first prize for guessing the first thing I do after a move. I always lock myself away and mope.

  I also call my friends back home, wherever that last place might have been. This time, things were more complicated. My best friend, Annie Green, was heavily medicated and undergoing electroshock therapy for severe depression from everything she’d gone through after being kidnapped. Some days she remembered me, other days not so much.

  I made my bed. Well, I made my mattress, since my mother couldn’t manage to buy me an actual bed. I made my room as colorful as I could with what I had: cloud-patterned sheets and pillowcase, a green blanket and a blue quilt. I piled books next to the mattress to create a kind of makeshift nightstand. The spines added color to the room. I placed my laptop that my old school had let me keep and all my art supplies on the floor next to the books.

  And that was it for now. A bare space with some color, and a laptop that gave me a door to the outside world.

  I decided to work on my graphic novel, Leotard Girl. I sat on the mattress, which thank God was comfortable, and opened one of my notebooks to look at the last few frames I had created. Tears trickled down my face. There was Leotard Girl standing by the hospital bed of her best friend. I thought of Annie, and wondered if she’d ever be OK.

  Then I heard crying. I tried to ignore it. At first, I thought it might be my mom, but soon realized it was coming from outside. Eventually, it got to me. I pulled back the window shade and peeked outside.

  Night had fallen. It was dark except for pools of light spilling out from the windows and screen door of the trailer next door. I couldn’t locate the crying person, although it sounded like they were close by.

  Curiosity got the best of me. I grabbed a sweater and went outside. As I slammed the door behind me, I heard my mom yell, “Shade! Where are you going? It’s dark and we don’t know this place!”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, I hoped she’d get a job or she’d be in my hair every minute of every single day.

  A shiver ran through me. It was much chillier here at night than it had been a few hours earlier. This was totally different than every place I’d ever lived before. This was my first time in a desert environment, a place where the air was dry and warmth evaporated with the light. Shady spots were cooler than lit spaces only inches away, and nights were apparently going to be chilly or cold.

  As I looked up, the beauty of the night sky took my breath away. Pitch-blac
k canvas, a few puffs of cloud, and the twinkling stars of the Milky Way spread out across the huge expanse of space. I’d only ever seen this many stars in pictures before, never in real life.

  I was wrenched from my sudden feeling of awe by crying that turned into sobs. I followed the sound to its source: a pale, thin girl about my age huddled in the shadows only inches from a pool of light under one of the next-door trailer windows. She was mostly a darkened shape. Her head on her knees and her arms wrapped tightly around them, she rocked back and forth, a dark creature moving in sadness.

  I walked up to her and said, “Hey...” I figured she’d either want to speak to me or she’d tell me to get lost. There was no sense wasting words until I knew if she was interested in talking.

  She looked up. Her body shook with a few more sobs. Then she wiped her eyes with the torn sleeve of her jacket and said, “Hey...”

  I shuffled my feet around in the desert dust, trying to decide if it was too forward to ask why she was crying. She spoke before I had made up my mind. She said, “You’re new here, right?”

  I pointed a thumb at our trailer and said, “Yeah, I live next door ... with my mom. It’s just me and my mom.” God, that was stupid. Did she really want to hear my family history?

  She started crying again. God! I asked, “Did I say something wrong?”

  She said, “No...” and struggled to gain control over herself.

  I tried something new. “I’m Shade.” I tried to cheer her up. I said, “OK. Full disclosure: my full name is Galactic Shade Griffin. What’s yours?”

  She said, “Your first name is Galactic?”

  OK. So, now who’s being rude? I said, “Yeah, but I always go by Shade...”

  She pulled herself to her feet. Apparently, whatever was bothering her could be forgotten at the mere mention of my ridiculous full name. She extended her hand. As I shook it, she said, “I’m Kai Zahnii.” The window light fell across her face. Her hair had been pulled into two dark braids, tied at the ends with turquoise beads. Her eyes were deep brown, soulful and wet with tears. She appeared to be Native American.

  Kai said, “You’re lucky you live with only your mom.” As she stepped further into the light, I saw a dark puffy bruise on her left cheek. She cupped it with her hand and said, “This here is a gift from my mom’s latest boyfriend. I hate him with all my heart.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I tried to comfort her. “I know the feeling. My mom’s been with a lot of jerks.”

  She said, “Yeah ... Sorry ... It sucks.” Then she changed the subject. “You want to go see some caves tomorrow?”

  That sounded promising. I said, “Sure. After school?”

  Her face fell. “I’m homeschooled. What time do you get back?”

  I said, “I’m not sure. Tomorrow will be my first day. Should I come over after the bus drops me off?”

  Kai said, “Nah. Don’t come over. I’ll watch for you. I’ll wait outside. Just come get me when you’re ready.”

  CHAPTER 2

  My first day of school was ... different. I’d never gone to school in a rural district where everyone was poor. The kids weren’t well-dressed, which I actually kinda liked because I didn’t have much of a wardrobe and I didn’t actually care too much about that kind of stuff. The thing that struck me was how the classrooms didn’t have much equipment and the library had hardly any books. There were completely bare shelves that didn’t even have a single book. The school’s name: Hidden Lakes High. It could have been called Hidden Books or Hidden Equipment High. They were just about as scarce as water in this desert institution.

  My first period was homeroom. Half the kids slept. The teacher didn’t care. He was young as far as teachers go. If this was the best job he could get, he couldn’t be up to much. Maybe got Cs in college or something. He put headphones on and ignored all of us—as well as his situation in life, no doubt. Just tuned it all out.

  I was bored. So bored! I wished I had my art notebook and some colored pencils, so I could work on Leotard Girl. I pulled out my English Literature textbook to see what we’d be covering. I liked the Dramatic Plays section. It looked like we’d be reading The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. The novels section was divided into two kinds of books: regular novels and graphic novels. We were actually going to read graphic novels, and we were going to read them in both English and Spanish! I was psyched. This I could live with!

  Next class was Biology. Something happened as I crossed the threshold into that classroom that I couldn’t quite explain. A chill passed through me, in a way that went beyond physical. I had a mild panic attack. Everything felt disoriented and foggy.

  When the school buzzer rang for classes to start, the teacher read roll call.

  He had the eyes of a weasel. Black and glittery, they darted around, looking for raised hands as he read our names.

  “Galactic Shade Griffin.” Shit. I hated roll call on first day. I raised my hand. Waited for the snickers. There was no reaction.

  There were other weird names. “Blue Patterson.” “Astral Plane Delgado.” Seriously? Astral Plane? Who the hell names their kid Astral Plane? My mother and their mother would get along famously. They could compare notes on how to wreck your kid’s life starting at birth. Why wait? Get a head start on all those other moms who wait a few years. “Wendy Crystal Sky Walsh.” “Balbo Shrooms.” Wow. Someone else’s mom likes drugs.

  OK. So either I was going to fit in with these kids or I totally was not. Weirdness foisted on a kid by their parents can go either way in how that kid turns out. Look at Annie. Her parents seemed so normal, but Annie had family problems. She was weird, but in a really good way. Not everyone figures out how to be weird in a good way.

  “Shade, what do you think?”

  Weasel eyes was staring at me. Had he asked me a question? I’d been daydreaming. I hadn’t heard a thing.

  Stalling for time, I said, “I’m not sure...”

  He glared at me. “You don’t know what you think about dissection?”

  My head felt funny. I thought I might pass out. I took a deep breath and said, “Oh, I don’t like it.”

  The teacher—whose name I learned, when I finally saw it written in chalk on the blackboard, was Mr. Mhavryck Taylor (seriously, what was with the spelling of that first name?)—left his place in front of the classroom. He walked over to a shelf that ran the length of the room on the side opposite the door.

  The shelf was filled with glass jars of clear liquid in which dead animals and organs floated around. I felt ill. I fought against throwing up.

  Mr. Mhavryck ran his fingertips over the lids on several jars. He picked up a large one. He carried it over to his desk. The clear liquid sloshed up and down, making the organ dance around when he plunked it down. He looked straight at me. He said, “You see this heart?”

  Oh my God, it was a heart! It looked human.

  He said, “This is from a big ol’ brown bear I shot. Shot it straight through its lungs with an arrow. The heart stayed in one piece. Now, if you ever need to hunt an animal for survival, you’re going to need to know where its organs are. If you’re going to be a doctor or a veterinarian, you’re going to need to know where the organs are.” He looked around with a goofy smile, his canine teeth sharp and protruding and pressing against his lower lip. He said, “You don’t want to take out a man’s heart when you meant to take out his appendix, am I right?”

  I wished he’d stop talking to me. Just talk to someone else. Talk to someone who goes hunting, I don’t know, just anyone else.

  Finally, he made his point. “Like I was saying before, our school can’t afford animals for dissection, which is the best way to go if you really want to learn how the innards of animals—and by extension, humans—work.” He picked up the jar with the bear heart and cradled it in his arms. Yes, that was as creepy as it sounds. He continued, “So we’ll have to settle for diagrams and movies and glass jars containing small creatures and organs for us to look at.
By the end of this class, I hope you’ll have a feel for the information that kids learn in high schools where they have the opportunity to dissect frogs and fetal pigs.”

  So, there was a benefit of moving to a rural school with no budget. I didn’t have to cut things open and puke.

  Mr. Mhavryck ... I realized I should call him Mr. Taylor even in my thoughts, so as not to slip and call him Mr. Mhavryck to his face; but his first name was just way too perfect for a guy who thought he was a maverick, but was simply his own unique kind of jerk ... dimmed the lights to show us a slide show. As he turned on the projector, his eyes became illuminated with an eerie green glow for a second. My heart pounded. Blood thudded in my ears.

  I looked at the jar containing the bear’s heart and swore I saw it beating.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  I blinked. When I looked again, the heart was still. The teacher’s eyes, however, were staring at me with that strange green glow.

  The slides showed the internal organs of several mammals: a bear, a pig, a cat and a dog. Thank God, it was a series of diagrams in which parts of the anatomy were labeled, not bloody depictions of dissections or surgery.

  Mhavryck watched me with his creepy stare that sparkled with glints of green every time the projector light bounced into his eyes.

  I started to fidget.

  Then the slides ended.

  The bell rang.

  I scooped up my books and hightailed it out of there as fast as I could.

  My next class was English Literature. That was much better than Biology. The teacher was a hippie type, though, and I’m a bit cautious around those types as my mom is one. Trust me, I’ve been burned through her hippie ways my whole entire life. But this teacher, Ms. Rose Bell, was a lot friendlier than my mom. Although I must say she didn’t dress any better. Her hair had been dyed pink, but had grown out a lot since whenever she’d had that done, so the blond part on top looked like a yellow helmet for the pink hair that flowed down past her shoulders. In addition to being pink, the bottom part was wild and frizzy to the point where I wondered if she owned a comb or hairbrush. She had on a flowered skirt with a T-shirt displaying a silver flying saucer on the front and the message “Believe. They’re here.” across the back. Whatever. After all, we were right next to Roswell. She probably got the T-shirt cheap in one of the shops.