her soft mewling sounds, I could hear wet slurps and sucking noises. My stomach growled sickeningly and my throat burned, hot and dry, like I’d swallowed fiery ash.
And then they were gone. They disappeared right before my eyes. I looked at the empty ground where the runner had lain only seconds before. There was no blood, no flattened grass, no disturbed dirt, no nothing. It was as if I’d imagined the whole thing.
Only I knew that I hadn’t. I had actually seen that man get killed and then fed upon. It was real. I was certain of it. I could feel it. But where was he? Who was he?
Shaken, I hurried back to the hotel. As soon as I was ensconced in the privacy of my room, I punched my home number into the cell phone. Then, as my thumb hovered over the green call button, indecision struck me.
My first instinct had been to call Derek, but that action was fraught with consequences, consequences that I wasn’t ready to deal with yet. Reminding myself that I am smart and capable, I hit the disconnect button. I was going to figure this out on my own. Once I found out the identity of the man, it would surely lead me to some explanation as to why I was seeing the girl from the Darkness feeding off his blood.
I spent the rest of the evening scouring the news channels for local deaths and tales of tragedy. Though there were many gruesome stories, none detailed a man hit and killed while jogging.
I walked down to the lobby for a newspaper, thinking there might be a small chance I was witnessing something that happened yesterday or the day before, but there was nothing.
Reclining on the bed, I dialed Mr. Allsley’s number once more, but got his voice mail again. This time I didn’t leave a message.
I flipped to another local news channel and settled in to watch television until I heard from Mr. Allsley. I was kind of stuck until I could reach him.
I must’ve drifted off to sleep, but I woke quickly when I heard a man’s voice saying something about a local man by the name of Byron Allsley. I blinked my bleary eyes at the television and saw a reporter standing alongside some railroad tracks.
“…Investigators believe that Allsley was out for his daily run when the train came upon him. A spokesperson from United Railway denies any knowledge of the dysfunctional warning system at this crossing, stating that all the quarterly diagnostic reports for this location checked out.
Allsleywas reported missing last night by his wife of nineteen years, Alicia Gaither Allsley, who has refused to comment at this time on whether or not the family will be seeking any kind of settlement from the railway…”
His words faded into the background when the screen switched to a picture of Mr. Allsley. My heart stuck in my throat as I looked at the handsome, olive-skinned face of the jogger I’d seen get crushed and eaten that afternoon.
Find Byron Allsley first.
I had thought I was supposed to find Byron Allsley first, as in before I went in search of my sister, but what if I was supposed to find him first, as in before someone else did, someone like the girl from the shadows? And why was she out of the shadows?
I thought of her, how much she looked like me and why I was seeing her. Was she really my sister or…someone, something else? Why was I linked to her? I mean, there was no question about our connection. I could feel it, like she was the other side of the coin, the yin to my yang. Was that a twin thing or something else?
Then I thought of my elemental powers and wondered about how I always saw her in the mist before, like she traveled in water. At least that had been the case until yesterday, when I’d seen her with Mr. Allsley. Why the sudden change? What had happened?
I had no answers, only the sinking feeling of inevitability. Was that my fate as well, what she was doing and seeming to enjoy? Would I soon be joining her?
A shudder ran through me followed by that steely sense of determination. I would either find her or find out what happened to her. And, aside from Derek, there was only one person I could think of that might know—my mother.
********
My luck took a turn for the better the next morning. After locating a