But it wasn’t real.
They were fake emotions, cultivated for the demon to use her this one time and make her supplicant to him.
Then, once he had spilled his seed inside her, she would belong to him.
That hadn’t happened.
And it wouldn’t, so long as I had anything to say about it.
I turned back to the bed.
I had to finish off the creature.
If I was quick, I could slow down the threat to her right here and now.
There was no way to kill the beast, not armed as I was, but I could give it enough wounds that it needed to heal from before it could give chase once more.
I checked the plasma readout on my blaster pistol.
More than enough to disable this monster.
I would finish him off and then go find the girl.
I could sense her out there now, running into the night, zigzagging through the streets.
Panicked.
Scared.
Confused.
I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have witnessed what she had and not know what was going on.
I aimed my blaster at the floor as I rounded the bed.
If my senses had been a little sharper, had been less full of Emma, I might have noticed the leg that’d lay flopped over the corner of the bed was no longer there.
When I lowered my blaster pistol to the figure, I found the space empty.
Iav wasn’t there.
A fist slammed into the back of my head, sending me sprawling.
I shoved myself off the wall and collapsed on the bed.
My Shadow struck at the wall where I should have landed.
The concrete gave way to his powerful fist.
I rolled over, my blaster pistol still clutched tight.
I took aim at the thick shadow in the corner and fired.
A hand swung from the darkness and knocked the pistol from my hands.
I didn’t lose my grip.
The blast of plasma illuminated the room for a fraction of a second before the pure energy burnt a hole in the wall.
I spotted the dark humanoid shape, pressed against the ceiling.
It ducked and spun to one side as I unloaded my pistol at it.
The bolts crackled as they zipped through the air, missing the creature by inches.
I kept firing.
In each millisecond of flashing light, the creature slithered, as graceful and terrible as water.
In many ways, Iav and I were the same.
He had a good idea of what I was going to do before I did it, just as I knew the same thing about him.
He would either go for the door to escape and chase after Emma or throw himself at me and attempt to wrestle the pistol from my grasp.
I rolled from the bed and onto the floor, placing myself between him and the door.
Any second now I would see a tiny movement of the shadows and open fire.
A second came.
Then went.
He knew I knew what he would do.
And that didn’t give him much incentive to do it.
Smash!
The window exploded, the shards of glass glinting like snow as they sailed toward the ground.
The creature perched in the window frame, grinning back at me the way he had moments earlier when he prepared to plunge into Emma.
The creature leaped out onto the street below.
I ran to the window and took aim with my pistol.
I appraised the shadows for movement but the creature had already gone.
He moved like the wind in the shadows.
Darkness was his home.
It would be hours yet before daylight warmed the skin of my face and I would have the advantage.
My Shadow would take after Emma.
She’d gotten some distance from us already.
It was a head start but not much of one.
My Shadow could sense her every bit as much as I could.
This world was alien to me.
Where would she run?
Who would she go to for help?
And could I reach her before the creature did?
I leaped from the window and landed in the shadows.
I rolled up onto my feet and immediately spun around, looking for the attack I knew could come at me from the darkness.
None did.
Not yet.
That didn’t mean it wouldn’t—only when I least expected it.
My Shadow might look like me but he was anything but.
He was my opposite, my darker side, identical to me in every way but where it mattered.
I was birthed in the light, he in the dark.
Similar and yet so different.
The same ingredients were used to make us but his soul had been twisted and morphed into something darker.
And more deadly.
I ran for the low wall that marked the small front garden of the property.
I jumped over it and entered the small circle of golden streetlight.
I felt stronger already.
I peered at the fringes of darkness and the trail of breadcrumbs that drifted in either direction down the street.
No sign of the monster.
No sign of Emma either.
My Shadow had a head start and it was more than he needed.
I took off at a run toward the throbbing light of Emma in the distance.
“Computer,” I said. “I need you to help me get to the girl.”
“You misplaced her already?” Computer said.
I could imagine him rolling his eyes—if he had eyes to roll, that is.
“Will you just get on with it?” I snapped.
“No need to be so grouchy.”
I made a mental note to alter Computer’s personality settings when I returned to my ship.
I bolted around a corner and almost flew headlong into a couple taking a midnight stroll.
“Computer. Gauge Emma’s speed and direction. Triangulate where she might go for help. I can’t afford to waste a single second.”
Being born and raised in darkness provided my Shadow with certain strengths.
His senses were stronger than those born in the light and could likely smell Emma and the trail she left in her wake.
If Iav was to reach her first, he would not be as patient with her as he had the first time.
“Affirmative,” Computer said. “Processing now.”
The Shadows’ naturally aggressive demeanor made them good hunters but poor researchers.
The light gifted us with wits able to develop advanced technology that was beyond the Shadow.
But that didn’t stop them from stealing every
