“Can I ask you a question?” the man said to her other self. When she didn’t answer, the man stepped directly in front of her and repeated his question.
“No,” Past-Lori said and continued on her way.
The man watched Lori’s other self go, his shoulders slumped in disappointment, or perhaps defeat. Other-Lori glanced back at him once, but she faced forward once more and kept walking.
Lori stepped away from the wall and hurried toward the man.
“You can ask me,” she said.
The man turned toward her, and when he saw her face, he frowned in confusion. She thought he might say something – Aren’t you the woman that just ignored me? But he didn’t. She looked into his eyes and saw darkness swimming there. An instant later, Shadowkin emerged from his body – heads, hands, moving in and out of him rapidly, as if they were trapped within him and trying desperately to free themselves. Then as quickly as it happened, it was over. The Shadowkin submerged back into the man, although she still saw the shadowy threads moving across his eyes.
The man pressed a hand to his chest.
“Do you know what I’m supposed to do with these things?” he asked.
Lori could only look at him, completely at a loss for words.
He sighed. “I didn’t think so. Thanks anyway.”
He turned away and re-entered the alley from which he’d emerged.
This was it. The moment she’d upset the Balance, the one she had to confess and atone for. And she’d just fucked it up.
She hurried into the alley after the man, gritting her teeth against the pain in her injured knee. The alley was clean for the most part, so she didn’t have to worry about cutting her bare feet, but even if the alley had been strewn with broken glass, rusty nails, and used hypodermics, she wouldn’t have hesitated to enter it.
The man was already halfway down the alley by the time she caught up to him.
“Wait!”
She reached for his shoulder, intending to take hold of it and stop him. But a shadowy clawed hand emerged from his back and took a swipe at her. In her mind, she heard an inhuman voice shout, Ours! She jumped back, but not in time to avoid being struck. The Shadowkin’s claws struck her right shoulder, slicing through the leather of Larry’s jacket and into the skin beneath. The impact of the blow knocked her hard against the alley wall. She hit, bounced off, lost her balance, and fell. Fresh pain flared in her knee, but it was nothing compared to the fiery agony that now burned in her shoulder. She sat up and looked at her injury, saw torn flesh through the ragged opening of the jacket’s shoulder, saw blood – lots of it.
She looked for the man, but didn’t see him. He’d reached the alley’s other end, walked out, turned right or left, then continued down the sidewalk. She needed to get up and get moving if she didn’t want to lose him for good. She tried to rise, but her bad knee refused to support her weight, and she slumped back down. She took a deep breath and tried again. This time she concentrated on the faces of those who had died. Except they weren’t dead in this time, were they? And if she could change what happened, prevent the Shadowkin from wreaking havoc in the real world, the Cabal would never intervene, and Larry, Reeny, and all the others would live. It was this thought that gave her the strength to get on her feet and stay there. She pressed her left hand to her shoulder wound to slow the blood loss as best she could, and then began hobbling down the alley.
She could move, but not very fast, and she almost lost sight of the man several times. The pain in her shoulder and knee merged into a single throbbing sensation of agony that suffused her entire body. It only made sense. She’d failed to confess and atone, and now she was suffering. The thought initially made her laugh, but this sent off a fresh wave of pain, and she instantly regretted it.
This slow-speed chase continued for several blocks until they reached the worst section of the Cannery District. Here, the buildings were run-down, many of them unoccupied, windows broken or boarded up. Most of Oakmont’s residents stayed away from this part of town, and only the homeless or drug users looking for a secluded place to feed their addictions came here. Before Goat-Eyes had approached her in FoodSaver, she would’ve been nervous about coming here. Now, after everything she’d seen and done in the last day, this place seemed about as dangerous as a child’s playroom.
The man never looked back once the entire time Lori followed him. She called out to him several times, but he never responded. Maybe he was hard of hearing, or maybe he didn’t want to have anything to do with her after her past self had blown him off like that. But she thought he didn’t respond because he was filled with Shadowkin and all he could hear were their voices whispering in his mind.
Eventually he stopped in front of a building with a faded sign over the entrance that said this was The Respite, below it the tagline Living Redefined. Like so many of the buildings in this neighborhood, The Respite had long been abandoned, and she wondered if the man was homeless, if this was the place where he sought shelter when the weather got bad. He walked up the concrete steps, opened the door – which creaked and sagged on its hinges – and went inside.
There was no traffic in this neighborhood, and Lori limped across the empty street, hand still pressed to her shoulder wound. She didn’t know how much blood she’d lost, but she felt weary, and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. She’d
